Noctilucid

Lovely shots , perhaps they were the baloons that nearly landed on the M4 last Saturday evening. While we were driving towards London, not far from Newbury, about 20-25 baloons all came into view, and they were all coming down over the M4, a few of them were coming so low over the road you could see the people in them, a few of them landed in the field next to the Motorway only about 100 yards from the road! They were heading West though, and one of them had 'Colchester' writtern on it so they most likely flew from East Anglia, it was a brilliant site though, ive never seen so many baloons in one place!

A lot of my most memorable storms were from when i was too young to really understand what was going on, I sort of remember those MCS storms in the mid to late 90's here that used to start at 7 in the evening and still be going at 7 the next morning. I also remember a storm, it must have been the late 90's or early 00's, when we had an incredible nightime storms with constant strobing lightning, I've never seen lightning flicker and strike the same place so many times in 10 seconds before or since! There were a succesion of homegrown storms last year that exploded around 3pm across the SE and East Anglia during a very humid day that dumped some incredibly heavy rain and produced very strong winds, I was watching the updrafts rise before my very eyes out the window during the last school class of the day, and you could actually see the rainshafts dropping and blocking out the sun (although the sky was very 'mushy'), I actually had to stay under the front porch of the school because I would have been washed away had I tried to go home, by the time I left the school was flooded, and as the storms moved off Eastwards most of the roads on the way home were up to a foot deep in water, water was also coming out of the drains! There were actully 2 cells, the first gave a brief downpour, the heaviest I had ever seen, and then the secon surpassed that a few minutes later and lasted mcuh longer! The first cell also gave no lightning, but the second gave off a couple of very strong bolts with rather loud thunder, there was also a pretty mean bolt that must have come out the back of the storm, I thought the storm was long gone but there was a pretty loud blast of thunder (I didnt see thelightning). My favourite stroms are those cold air mass ones you get rattling in from the West behind a strong cold front, and there was one a couple of years back which gave off a small lightning flash, but this was followed by the most immense explosion of thunder I've ever heard (+ve bolt perhaps??), it turned out later the local fire station training tower had been struck, and one person who was working on it was given a bit of a jolt! Lets not forget Jan 2004, rain and lightning which was melting the snow that had fallen the previous day (leaving me dissapointed that I wouldn't get a day off school, I come on this place and everyone North of me over Essex is reporting epic wind driven snowfall, and sure enough withing ten minutes the snow came, the transition from rain to snow was so abrupt, it went from rain to sleet and then all of a sudden a massive blast of horrizontal snowflakes within 30 seconds, I though it was amazing also how quickly the sky turned red and visibility reduced to nothing within a few seconds, a once in a lifetime experience (well this far south anyway!). Some of my favorite memories come from those squalls you get with cold fronts in the Autumn and winter, once I was on the beach in Nothern France when one came ashore after crossing over from England (yes there is such thing as English imports in France! B) ), getting caught in the torrential wind driven rain can be quite fun and amusing! B) Hopefully Autumn will bring plenty of these!

Wow, the fact that the storm has an area of scud with the rain shafts behind it makes me think that this might have been a weak supercell, I think supercells are like that with a rotating updraft base and a separate rain shaft with a 'vault' in between them, I saw something quite similar a month ago near Newcastle Under Lyme. It also might be a gust front, I really am not sure I know what I am talking about, I wonder what more educated people have to say on this? Great video capture and photos there.

Strong elevated storm moving up from south, frequent CG and IC flashes.

They just don't do winers like they used to nowadays do they. I can never remember an good winter, this was all a year before I was born. B) Its amazing to see such sustained northerly or easterly shots, nowadays set ups like that with LP to the South and HP to the North seem hard to come by. If only we had Northerly or Easterly blasts in winter as frequently as we have southerly plumes in summer.

This area seems to be right where cu initiates and then explodes over London. :o

Your photograpy skills are excellent.

Big storm approaching from the South, deep rumbles.

Good luck to you all, I hope you bag tons of storms.

Really nice pictures. I think thats Portland Bill in Dorset. :o

Brilliant, a great photo there of an amazing storm, that looks like something straight out of the Midwest USA.

Brilliant pics. :lol: I think Londons being hammered again by the looks of things, towering anvils and almost black bases can be seen all across the western horrizon.

Ah yes I remember this well, there was a lot of 'crap' ahead of this storm, mainly altocu and various bits of congesting cumulus, but i remember all your reports of an insane storm and the tense radar watching, and the sky slowly turned mushy black to my South East. As the storm tracked up through Kent out of an opening in the clouds to me ESE, I saw an absolutely amazing thunderhead with an overshooting top being lit up by the last rays of sunlight, and red lightning bolts were jumping all over the place inside the anvil as well! Thanks for the great pictures and video :o Joe :o

Well I always beleive that the climate runs in a cycle, it may be warming now, but one day the climate wil balance itself out and head the other way. Perhaps in a few hundred years time people will be enduring 10 inches of snow once more! What goes around comes around

Hmm most memorable thunderstorm... I remember a storm when I was quite young, probrably around 1999-2000, I think it was on a cold front and the cloud base was incredibly low, what I remember is the lightning, more or less all of it was cloud to ground, and also it was probrably the only time ive seen flickering lightning bolts, they must have been flickering about 12 times a second, it was mental. I can also remember those multicells that used to start before I went to sleep and would end just as i was waking up the next morning! Another storm which must have been around 2003 came rolling up from the South after an incredibly hazy humid day, I remember that day being so humid that there was a halo round the sun reflected from all the moisture! The rain was very prolonged and heavy and although the lightning was quite infrequent it was very powerful and we had a few trees struck within a kilometre! The first plume of 2005 also, it was a short lived, weak affair, but its leading edge brought some very high based storms in the night, which uncharacteristicly for high based storms, gave us torrential rain! And an incrediblt lightning display, high based storms are very eerie, loads of very tall lightning bolts but its deadly silent and often still at the surface, sometimes you get very odd thunder also, sounds more like a gunshot. 2006 was a mental year also, at the end of may we had a loaded gun scenario, with loads of CAPE but a warm air layer acting as a cap, in my area the day had been mostly cloudy with low cloud, but over South West London, south of heathrow airport it had been clearer and daytime heating broke the cap causing some very isolated but very mental storms to move North Eastwards across london and out to sea and over Essex, dumping record rainfall amounts! Iremember that day well, reports started coming in here of developing storms in the Staines area, soon the humid mushy low cloud began to darken rapidly, the first smaller strom passed to my south over the Bexlyheath/Chatham area, very mushy dark skies could be seen to my south, and a few quiet rumbles of thunder were heard, but then another cell followed up bhind, as it approached the sky didnt look that dark, but cloud bases were very low and CG's were jumping all over the place to my South West, after the lightning show moved through, the absolutely torrential rain began, it appeared afterwards that the storm had developed further overhead, and gave areas around NE London and Southern Essex record rainfall, the heaviest rain ive ever seen in my life! The end of July 2006 was alo marked by a very strong outbreak, although we had no overhead storms, some very powerful ones were knocking about nearby. The day started clear and humid, but around mid day the cap broke. Within half an hour huge Cb's were building and it became very dark to my east, this moved off North, and I could see an absolutely hug, thick anvil, this storm at the time was affecting North Essex, over 30 miles away yet the storm was still nearly overhead! This cleared off, and most of the mid day was brighter, the storm also seemed to bring drier air in its wake, so visibility improved, meanwhile some very strong storms formed a line over Southern Berkshire and moved rapidly NE, soon i could see a giant wall of anvils on the Western Horrizon, andd huge towers feeding into it on the tail end, which was the area most liely to hit here, some very storng storms formed on the tail end and it went incredibly dark, with a strong lightning show being reported in London, however this suddenly dissipated, however as it was doing so, a massive storm formed to the East over Eastern Kent, and ran up the coast into Essex giving Eastern Kent a massive lightning show, i was lucky enough to get a photo as the setting sun illuminated the anvil. I remember this day as feeling incredibly humid too, the air felt sieriously thick! I still think the storms in cold air masses are the best though, you can see all the structure, the clear air makes photos come out amazing, also the storms that rattle in from the west seem to be rather strong, such as November 2006, I remember the cold front fast approaching, and the cliud being balck and nearly at ground level, we had horrizontal rain rattling through and some very loud thunder, this storm supposedly gave London a tornado, but I think it was just a localised squall. I absolutely love strong cold fronts, they make brilliant video/photo opportunities. Jan 2004 thundersnow event also deserves a mention, black clouds descended from the North, moderate rain began and got heavier, and then all of a sudden, a massve gust of wind picked up, I remember watching the rain turn to horrizontal snow flakes in about three seconds! Visibility also went from good to virtually nothing in about 10 seconds! Wehad green lightning from that as well, very close by, the thunder sounded all odd and muffled, the snow flakes got bigger and bigger also, and the best snow came after the front, it must have snowed huge flakes for about 2 hours! Joe

the really powerful storms that form in cold air masses, that havevery frequent lightning are the ones that scare me the least, itsthe ones that drift up from France in humid sultry air that scare me the most, its not the storm more the long approach of it when the air goes really close and dark. Joe

nah im undergoing therapy at a local place in NE London. Joe

Being only 15 my weather knowledge isnt exactly amazing I also, like you have a severe phobia of thunderstorm, which fascinate me as well, its something im now undergoing therapy to get over Its dry here now byt cloudy, and activity seems to be winding down, strongest being over West London and S albans way giving heavy rain. Joe

!christ!

i agree, i think 2007 is almost certainly a blip, and that it will be buisiness as ususal next year, the thing is that we dont have seasons now, we have 'months' of weather, alternating between zonal trains of lows and a flat jet and extreme heat and a euro high, we can no longer guarentee that winter will be cold or that summer will be hot. Joe

TBH i dont think this is a turning point, from now on i beleivethe weather will be all over the place, with extremley hot years (aka 2006,2003), unusually cold and wet years (2007 so far,2004) and in between years such as 2005, global warming isnt warming at all, it just makes the extremes move further and further apart, so well be having some years or months that are incredibly hot with prolonged heat and a Euro High permanenlty stuck in place, and other years or months that are incredibly wet and cool, with strong northern blocking and a Jet blasting right down the channel, and if any strong pattern gets going, itll stay like that for a long time. I think that todays summers are decided by the start of June, if a strong pattern is established by then, it is likely to give us heat or cold and wet that will dominate. Joe

Thames valley area hasnt hadmuch rain yet today, here on the north side of the valley weve had some fine rain on and off so far, currently watching the channel stuff, howevere it might start moving south again as it wraps around the low, luckily for us were 100ft up the valley side,however places further downhill such as Romford and barking look at risk, especially the river Rom and Roding/Barking Creek. Joe

beautiful clear skies and afir weather clouds here, the air is crystal clear, also very breezy and can see the distant anvils of what has passed wayy off to my West and North. Winds have switched round from SSE to SW as the low centre passes through. Joe

fortunately were on quite a large ridge here so were safefrom flooding, however my school about 1 1/2 miles away was beggining to flood as i left (finally broke up, no more year10!), last time we had a torrentila storm there the place ended up 1ft deep in water! And within a split second the rain stopped and the suns coming out!! Joe :huh:

torrential rain here, but the core of the curernt storm is passing off to my NW, caught thetail end of the band earlier and that gave a few rumbles, torrential rain non stop since though. Was listening to a radio interview from the sundat tims building (not sure), the fire alarm went off, they said that lightining had hit the building and set it off! Joe :huh: