Lightning Ed

So true.. haha. I didnt hold up much hope today being out all day and watching the sky nothing around here looked like it was really developing - even when the sun came out.

I'm speechless. Its headline world news on the BBC. I'm stunned - truly. As above my thoughts go to everyone affected by this.

About 20mm of snow in my garden. Fallen in the last couple of hours. Seems to have mostly stopped snowing now.

woo been a while since I posted... Agree with above although I'd have liked to put the snow chains to use agian haha..

Well this is beginning to look really quite crazy. The rain is slow moving and some parts of the SE have been absolutely soaked by slow moving torrential rain it seems.

I love cars and lightning. I guess im doomed one way or the other!

One of nasa's space ships was stuck on take off was it not several years ago? This originated from a storm 20+ miles away apparently. I remember watching a program about this how they now monitor storms from much further away due to incidents like this. It is very very fascinating indeed. I was lying on my back in a park in Surrey with some friends probably about 8 years ago. It was a bright sunny day, a couple of small clouds about, but then we saw a flash of lightning in the sky. I never heard the thunder, and I would not have even noticed it had I not been looking. so I guess yes it does happen. Ed

Im seriously glad thats not my bike in those pics! They are crazy!

My dad thought the same some years ago when I was given a moped in my early teens and drove round my garden with my cousin and did over 300 miles in a week. There was no grass left. hahaha.

Its so annoying that weeds are so much more resiliant to dry spells than grass. My garden looks like a wild forest now lol.

Only thing I remember from 87' was the hurricane!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/s...000/2533219.stm I remember this very well (well some details) I was 7. It must have been pretty immense at the time, to form such long memories as it has. I remember the roof creaking and tiles falling off etc, and the walk in the park the day after lol

No problem I have some of my own system info and expreience on my site under the solar section. Ed

I'm stubborn in the fact that I dont ever think so. lol. I would happily eat my words however and sit in a corner and sulk (and then celebrate at my limitless source of power) if somone eventually does prove otherwise. The world as we knew it would never be the same again

Ok, I do agree with the principle of what you are saying, there is definately alot of unknowns but equally alot of fundementals have been discovered or are better understood.

Trouble is we have a greater understanding of our world today that leaves the posibility of coming across such groundbreaking discoveries today much more remote than before.

If you understood the law of conservation of energy you would see the water idea a non starter. As it happens the topic has already been covered here: http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?s...mp;#entry764457 In summary - and this has been proven, the whole water powered concept is impossible, and the cars that claim to be powered by it is simply a con: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell the only half working idea is a hybrid concept, but alas its still a concept, and not a workable solution, and it can never be more than a hybrid, unless there is a source of power to run the system, but thats what were trying to find afterall. "Turbines are very obtrusive, ugly and grossly inefficient." Is another comment I read and imo a very missleading one. How can you really say any freely generated power is inefficient, technically they could optimise the generator efficiency but then your effectivly tuning for specific weather needs and since those are not consistant you have to engineer around it lowering efficiency at a given point but over all you generate more power from the given enviroment. I am pro the Nuclear programme. But given the choice I would rather be self sufficient on power. Right now all my home lighting is provided by solar, as is the power to charge my laptop , cameras and mobile phone, and has been since the beginning of the summer. This and other changes around my home slashed my power and gas usage by 60-75% over the same time last year. Its a bonus to my pocket, just as much as it is to the enviroment. Recently the planning laws were relaxed to an extent to help micro power generation, and as a result I am looking at small scale wind generation to assist the solar. "Nuclear Power is simply dangerous, thats the bottom line. Its in no way of any benifit to man kind. It destroys the enviroment. I cant see why that they dont use friendly sourses of power, wind wave solar etc. There are so many toxic by-products pumped into the enviroment that we still dont know the effects off." A close family friend was a chief engineer at a uk Nuclear power plant, She recently retired. I just thought you may like to know that the background radiation levels in her place of work were less than that of those living on the volcanic rock of devon/cornwall. Nick H says many factual comments on the front page about how cleaner Nuclear can be. drgl asks "I wonder how much energy would be generated if every households roof was effectively a solar panel as opposed to tiles? It wouldn't make much inpact on the existing environment from an ansthetic point of view?" The answer to this is infact more than you need to run your own house. You may be interested in this site: http://community.livejournal.com/green_power_gen/ Rowan Langley has installed his own 500w solar system and his house entirely runs on this. You, Crimsone, actually mention geothermal pumps, which is a great idea. Aircon is vital for some parts of the world and imo except for some places of work a luxary in the UK, using the earths natural temp to your own advantage and insulating your house from the elements both hot and cold is a brilliant way to cheaply get cooler air. The ironic thing is that aircon etc, is used on the hottest days with the hottest ambient temps, meaning that the compressor half of the aircon units have to work extreamly hard - eating massive amounts of energy to do their cooling. If people were to use the ground as a kind of heatsink, then in some cases the power required by the aircon can drop by other two thirds. However your view of water as a fuel is missunderstood. You know full well that when you burn Oxygen and Hydrogen you will generate alot of energy, the waste product then being water. In exactly the same way it takes a similar (or more due to process inefficiency) to split the water back in to its discrete molecules, ready to be burnt off again as heat and then return to water. There is no short cut to this process. There simply cannot be. Water again is not a fuel its a byproduct of combustion. Ps. my first post was a tease, experience has taught me that energy and anything green often has strong almost irrational/unfounded views associated with it.

I'm amazed at thread. I have not read it all but techically what has been said on the first page is SO WRONG about renweable energy I dont really know where to start. Also cars CAN NOT and will NEVER run on water. Please at least understand the basic rules of the law of conservation of energy...

I took this just under 2 years ago beside the pond in my garden, It was like the thing was posing for me

It seems to be fairly slow moving. I am home now but still hearing rumbles etc..

Lots going on around me right now. I have just been up on the north downs watching. unfortunately i didnt get antthing to show but saw some pretty good CG's and some extreamly heavy downpours. Quite a good if dispersed storm. Lots of convection going on. I am actually quite surprised I didnt expect this from today.

There are many many photos like this from the show I was at, lots of tents and gazzebos went flying, I've personally never whitnessed anything quite so dramatic from English climate before. Ed

Its located in Botley, Warlingham, Surrey. The lightning was actually some way behind it, It is no where near as close as it looked. The tower was about 100-150m away, the lightning about half a mile. Its not a big tower, just looks quite imposing in that image, it was a 15 sec shutter. I guess the lightning happand about 3 sec into that, I am not kidding that by 7 seconds I was running across the road back to the car feeling that OMG that looked close. Its high and open up here. As it happend the storm died shortly after that photo.

Ok I admit I voted for myself... I guess there are not as many lightning fans here as I hoped :lol: !!! lol btw for anyone interested that photo is compleatly unedited (even colour) except to darken as it was a little overexposed on the origional. Essan is my faviourite other, pin sharp, and with that rolling mist you get across the parts of the SW. Excellent

Just realised there are 3 pages, wondered where mine was lol teach me not to read the first post properly.. Didnt realise there were so many other good ones! Ill have my vote shortly!

I like the Dartmoor one!