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its actually quite electrical

storm is breaking now in W1. Thunder and Lightning GOD RIGHT OVER US - INTENSE RAINFALL -

the sky's gone dark green!

Wherebouts are you? it has gone so dark here cars have their lights on , streetligths are on but its still dry! the most bizarre thing. feels like an eclipse!

thunder, heavy rain now - at last! B) # sorry , i meant east to west earlier as well , cloud direction.

the low clouds are scudding across the sky from west to east at incredible speed, but there's no wind. strange. lightish drizzle now.

whereabouts in south west london are you?

ok. i guess it should just be a matter of time if its raining in Reigate and Crawley; but seems slow moving if thats the case.

non event here in London - appears there was lots of media overhype especitally for this area. someone in the office reported flooding in Horsham though.

looks like we're going to miss it here. its all moving north west. boo.

must be on its way here then. how fast is the band moving?

We had a light shower early hours of this morning in Dulwich; in the West End at work now and thhere's a few spots of rain , its very dark, like a November mormnig incredibly humid People at work are joking "we're all going to drown" . hope not - i'm on the second floor! PS can see streetlights coming on in Oxford Street - that's how dark it is!

It appears to me from the sequences that are being run on the Beeb that the rain will run up the country relatively quickly. I just wonder whether this event is being over played just a little, because of the recent extreme rainfall event in Yorkshire. Maybe there's an element of "playing it safe" in terms of warnings - though i agree its better to be safe than sorry - but 4 inches, does seem a lot to forecast - surely that must be with embedded thunderstorms? though not much mention of these yet.

I apologise! It was supposed to be a light hearted, tongue-in-cheek, comment so ridiculous that people would see it for what it was - ridiculous. Sometimes these things get lost in translation on messageboards, i guess. There's no way that would ever happen because of a rain event, everyone knows that. sorry, just feeling the need to make a ridiculous comment after a hard day at work. sorry that everyone's so serious! love James

maybe the Thames will overflow and flood London , causing billions of pounds worth of damage and thousands of deaths........ but then, maybe not!

wow - thought you were joking / overexaggerating when you posted on Sunday! scary stuff- glad you are ok ! lets hope we get more supercells this summer

i agree with this. even with global warming we have to expect normal temp summers a fair degree of the time as things warm up. people's expectations after the last few years of hot summer/ heatwaves are totally unrealistic, i've never heard so many moaning minnies. they should get on with enjoying the summer, its lovely.

15.5

bizarre and meaningless

Guys I hate to have a sense of humour failure here but lets have a reality check....... the man's style is just bizarre, distracting, a bit strange and can be slightly creepy sometimes, and also patronising to boot. He also seems to think everyone in the UK has the same boring lifestyle i.e mum ,dad, 2.4 kids, lives in the suburbs, goes for walk in park on a sunday, has 9-5 job, cuts their lawns, a trip to a retail park for a spot of shopping at Ikea, maybe? His vapid generalisations about what one might be getting up to in ones daily life really get my goat and if my TV hadnt been so expensive i would have probably smashed it up by now. Who cares about what we might be doing in our every day lives? maybe a 1 second mention - great day for a walk - but not this endless eccentric drivel which sometimes lasts for the entire forecast. Every word he spends spouting about perhaps you're going for a walk to the shops to pick up some groceries for your nan etc etc etc is time which would be better spent on hard facts and detail about the weather - rather than instructing me as to whether i might like to take a brolly or not, or that i should get out more and enjoy the sun. I might like walking to the shops in the rain naked for all he knows or have a rare skin disorder that makes me alergic to sunlight! In addition to the unneccesary lifestyle advice, his descriptions of the synoptics are basically patronising baby language which the beeb adopts when spekaing about any kind of "sciency" subject these days. appalling. it thinks is making the weather "accesible" (whatever that means) but it is actually just very very annoying and borne out of an institutional embarrassment about approaching anything on a bit higher level than that which a 12 year old could understand. there are millions of people in this country who ARE clued up about the weather and we don't need this storms looking like "sphagetti" or "lawnmowers" drivel. leave it for the United States Dan where the average mental age of the viewer and more particularly their awareness of the world around them stops at about 8 years old. And that's my rant..........for now.

Looks like Vince could be right!

actually i worked out that i flew 45,000 miles last year on holidays still - i have energy saving lightbulbs at home!

there is no way i am gouing to cut down on the amount i fly just because of global warming. i fly up to 30,000 miles a year on holidays which is a lot, but i dont drive a car, i cycle to work, and live in a small modern flat with good insulation and double glazing and efficient bulbs, i recycle, eat organic localish produce, keep the heating turned down. Am i therefore evil for flying so much? i refuse to believe so. with the money i pay for tickets and the tax i contribute through various means i think that the airline industry and govt should come up with cleaner technology in the first instance. talk of boycotting air travel, getting the train to greece is simply farcical and of course making it super expensive or having "air mile allowances" for travel by air is just barmy and will serve to make it more elitist , whatever people say. another great step in social mobility for this country. and never mind that losing Heathrow as a major hub when flying from here is taxed to hell will mean most Brits have to endure the inconvenience currently experienced by other Europeans who come here, of having to fly out of to France or Frankfurt who are just waiting to steal a march, and wait for a plane there for hours to take you on to your fnal destination. No thanks. As usual the rich with their private planes and those who use first class lounges and speeded check in arrangements will be spared the worst inconvenience. no , as usual , it will be Joe Public who are singled out to be trampled on. once again there is another agenda at work in all this and it isnt climate change. it is political opportunity and the excuse to restrict other people's activities and freedom and a great wheeze for a shed load of tax to prop up our skint economy. i'm only 32 and i hate being so cynical but when you see the Beeb and the Guardian ramping this "air travel is evil" "lets all feel guilty about it" claptrap in the face of the real facts, i just know there are other motives at work. would be great if we were told what they were but this "stop flying because of CO2 emissions" is the greatest con going right now, even if you buy into the AGW theory (which i do). its just sad people cant see it.

by that measure we had a few "hot" days in January!

feelin hot hot hot!