Evening thunder

A cool feel but not too bad here really, mostly sunny and 17.4c. Tonight looks chilly.. Even the Met Office are forecasting 6c nearby and we're usually a couple degrees cooler.

Coolest min of the summer last night at 5.9c. Could well get lower this week though.

Several heavy showers the day before yesterday gave 14.2mm. Quite cool last night with a min of 7.5c (that's after 3 separate mins of 7.4c this month, one yesterday). A morning of sunny spells and patchy cloud, temp currently 18.2c after reaching 19.2c in a sunny spell recently.

It looks like we are going to get some quite notably cool uppers despite all the warmer than average SST's to our north. At the end of August 2010 similar uppers gave a min of 3.0c here with a touch of ground frost seen! That was unusual so probably not quite that cold this time but some chilly minima look likely here. If it's just dry/settled weather you want and temps don't matter too much the forecast doesn't look too bad down here. For me I'd prefer temps a bit warmer with such weather and/or some other weather going on like convection/storms.

It may use the same source I'm not sure, but think it's quite good for a general view (even if it may not pick out the high detail of local temperature differences around the coast which can happen). Temps seem to have fallen more in some places than others, some areas around the coast haven't registered too much of a drop (still 18-19C) It can be surprising, what tends to happen is strong winds/large waves mix warmed upper layers with cooler water below which causes the temperature near the surface to drop. In the case of this summer it had been quite calm until recently so limited mixing had occurred and surface layers were notably warmer than average. It's this surface warming (probably along with its shallowness) and non-mixing that allowed the enclosed Baltic to warm to over 23c in places recently, up to 9.5c above average! Though temps are dropping back there now. In some cases strong offshore winds could can also drag surface water away from a coast causing up-welling of cooler deeper water. I would prefer SST's not to drop further yet but yes they may well do with cool NW'erly winds.

Just noticed a possible funnel cloud at Dawlish on webcam at this website: http://www.dawlishweather.co.uk/index.htm There's nothing there now so it could have been genuine and not a mark on the camera That weather station recorded a rain rate of 180mm/hr just before. Can see the other side of the responsible shower from here

Another shower that was briefly torrential, daily rainfall 9.6mm now. There was one relatively distant rumble from over Exeter, so perhaps another day of between 1 and 3 distant rumbles to add to my count.. Would be nice if we could get a proper storm like many places, a good day for heavy showers though.

Only 4.4mm here but still nice to watch, just about the heaviest downpour to actually hit my back garden this summer.

Already had some heavy/torrential showers this morning, better than northing. Top rain rate 79mm/hr. According to ATD it's started producing sefrics east of here lol

It was looking good for here but now the CAPE moves/develops just east of me before peak heating once again.. :/ Wonder if the GFS could be wrong and it will be a tad further west.. probably not.

This link:http://www.channelcoast.org/data_management/real_time_data/charts/ gives the latest coastal observations (though more so for Channel coasts), the sites from Poole east to Hastings were generally showing above 20C until Bertha came along and has mixed up the waters a bit, though still 19-20C in that area. Some sites around the SW seem to have had bigger drops. I tend to follow this link http://ghrsst-pp.metoffice.com/pages/latest_analysis/sst_monitor/ostia/sst_plot.html?i=34&j=2 and it shows SST's to have dropped quite a lot in recent days out in the western Channel, in fact if you switch to anomalies (link below the key) there's quite a lot of average or even slightly below average water around/offshore from parts of the UK that wasn't there before.. As for effects on the weather assuming SST's are above average into Autumn, as mentioned it could give some kind of positive bias to temperatures, and probably aid coastal convection/thunder risk a bit. No doubt the coastal 'storm season' would start in late September once I've gone back to my inland uni (as the 'inland' storm season ends).

I'd have rather the GFS and other models (was GFS, UKMO and GEM at times), solution of another low coming in from the SW which brought warmer uppers for a bit and thunder potential shown with the low was correct rather than what is now shown i.e simply a cool flow for days on end with not much weather happening. But I knew ECM would be correct as it is the best model in that time frame really, did much better than GFS in the July plume, correctly predicted the very warm spell after that before other models, and then the following 'northerly toppler' better than other models. Still, there could be a decent amount of sunshine and it's better than grey skies. Wouldn't mind the ECM this morning in September onwards but a bit cool now when I'd prefer to be enjoying the last of summer warmth in a proper summer month before it's too late.

Nice little thunderstorm Warminster way (may have been triggered by the shower which went over here about 2 hours ago looking at the radar)

What I meant earlier by this year being 'reasonable' here is that though my count looks good on paper (for this area), the most since I started counting in 2008, many have just been a couple distant rumbles. My perception may be altered storms/downpours often missing here but being able to hear a couple distant rumbles from them so having to add them to my total. Also any near/overhead events have been quite weak except one in June I missed (though one in July had great if infrequent lightning). It has been quite a good year though we haven't been hit by several decent/strong storms like some areas seem to have. I've seen a bit more on storm chases which makes up for the missed stuff though not the same as a storm at home for me. I think I've had less thunder days than 14 too as my count includes a few distant night lightning but no thunder events like in early January. Today we've had a couple very heavy/torrential showers (they aren't missing here for once!), the second of which had quite strong winds with it which was nice to watch. Not as good cloudscapes as yesterday but more rain here. No thunder though.

A good day for showery skies and CB's here yesterday, although not much from before 3 to 9pm. Had one brief very heavy shower, several torrential showers went just to the north as per usual this summer, or if not a couple went to the south. A couple relatively distant rumbles to the NNW, brings this years thunder or lightning seen days to 14 which is reasonable but most have been things like today, only a few decent events i.e storms overhead, and missed a couple of them. When I looked yesterday evening Denmark/far north Germany was getting a load of good looking night time storms coming off the North Sea, generated by the warm SST's that way, and that area still is now 12 hours later! Shame that can't happen here. Decent CAPE levels generated around the Baltic forecast for the next week or so too.

We've had some heavy showers develop and pass near here, one updraught seemed to have a bit of rotation in it, then in a following shower some interesting cloud movements, this time local anticyclonic rotation, scud/cloud quite rapidly descending and evaporating as well as rising, and also scud/low cloud moving in different directions in close proximity. Might not have been anything significant but there seems to be some interaction between different wind directions/speeds near cloud base level, wouldn't be too surprised to hear a funnel report somewhere.

Yesterday turned out to be a mostly decent day apart from the wind, top gust on my station 35mph, enough to blow a fair few leaves and some twigs off due to lack of strong winds this summer. Just a couple brief showers at noon and 7pm, and anvils to finish the day. Felt warm after cloud cleared in the morning as the dew point reached 19c and temp 20.7c, but then the much fresher air came in with ~11c dew points. As for today some good shower clouds around but only a couple brief ones here so far, intense one developed and passed just to my north, as most have so far this summer! Looked interesting with a bit of rotation in the updraught in fact.

Had some very heavy/torrential bursts of rain here, and there are thunderstorms out there but they are on track to go each side of me at the moment as usual, unless heavy showery bits further to my SW can develop.

Interesting.. Perhaps some embedded convection on the front as it moves east? Though like TonyH says the front will probably move through reasonably quickly for those south of the low centre Somewhere around/just NW of the low centre will probably get a lot of rain, GFS 06z thinks the heaviest will be over the sea SW of Wales.

Northern end of the Peak District National Park, slightly south of Huddersfield - 986mb.

About 1 spot of rain every square cm earlier here.. lol. The spots were falling for a while but are evaporating from cars etc before they make anything wet. That main area of rain went to the east as things often have recently. A cloudy afternoon (thick mid level cloud) and currently 16.9c, after a max earlier of 21.5c during late morning brightness. Yesterday and the day before were good summer days with maxima of 24.2c and 23.4c, though quite cool last night down to 8.4c.

Some showery outbreaks last night and this morning, there were some torrential downpours several miles north of here (just north of Honiton) earlier today lasting up to an hour in places with over an inch suggested by the Netweather radar. The river suddenly rose nearly 2ft late afternoon as the water came downstream. Had some heavy rain here this evening, though it looks to have gone through now. Total 16.0mm since midnight, 11.2mm of that this evening.

Some torrential showers to my north producing nice CB's, some turrets seem to go up higher than the rest of the CB with pelius on top, before being blown downwind.

In reply to posts after mine yesterday, yeah it can be frustrating, we have had a good summer here don't get me wrong, just can be a bit underwhelming seeing seemingly everywhere getting more interesting/warmer weather when I live for variety and extremes in weather. I try to and do find interest in, and also positives about our weather/climate though. Back to our climate and summer, this has been a decent one here, and will remain so overall unless I see rain every day and temps stuck in the teens, which isn't showing yet. Really what it looks like to me is maybe 2 or 3 days out of 7 with significant rain (could give a lot but I don't mind that,especially if in downpours/thunderstorms), with temps in the low 20's and reasonable sunshine in-between. In fact some runs this evening and the Met Office forecasts downgrading Fridays low and/or rain totals here, as such I can't point to a date we will definitely get a lot of rain, just potential from showery/thundery days or fronts that may or may not hit us. We probably will get a decent fall here at some point but I won't mind.Obviously after this week it could get worse than that but I don't see why I should believe this evenings ECM day 7-10 more than this mornings, or that would last long. I am a tad disappointed any warm/hot spells or plumes (night time storm chance) seem off the agenda now but that could change before August's out.

Last August was decent here, if nothing exceptional. Mean maxima about a degree above average.