Evening thunder

Had a storm pass west of me Friday evening. I wasn't here but had driven west of Tiverton to see a strong one moving for there on radar, then saw the one near Exeter from a distance but saw quite a bit of lightning, some good lightning at times. Not quite sure how the storm structure looked from home or how much/close thunder and lightning was.. trying to ask my dad is not much use 'it sort of went dark over there' lol. some kind of not that close flashes and rumbles too apparently. With the system today into tomorrow, The NAE wants to give some places almost 100mm A similarish pattern to it's previous run too. Much of it falls tomorrow morning with a very intense narrow band coming ashore, over 50mm in 6 hours in the brightest purple The NAE can sometimes be a way off with it's rainfall predictions though.. but some heavy could add some interest. I wonder if there could be convective elements in it given the quite localised totals shown if anything similar comes off?

There's still some risk of some storms next week perhaps, for example Monday: and Wednesday: Minimal risk in the west too tomorrow on the GFS, and some other days next week. Purely hypothetical but I reckon charts like at the end of the GFS and ECM runs this evening could give thunder in places too, with 'thundery shower' days For example: http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20130803/12/336/ukcapeli.png from this chart http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20130803/12/336/h850t850eu.png and http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20130803/12/360/ukcapeli.png from http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20130803/12/360/h850t850eu.png I reckon the ECM would give similar too http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Recm2402.gif However we need the right types of set up, and they are not that likely to be strong/active storms like plumes and warmer air masses recently can give.

Not keen on the ECM this morning too much cool air as in sub-5c uppers, oh well hopefully it changes, has shown this before and been wrong and would go against the latest ECM monthly I saw which showed temps staying above average through August.

The radar doesn't show anything over Staines at the moment. Earlier on some smaller storms passed just to the east of you though by a few miles or so. Down here I got woken up a while ago by a surprise torrential shower with huge drops. Was brief though only giving 0.4mm

34.1C has been reached according to the Met Office on Facebook: 'Today was the hottest day for over seven years - with a maximum temperature of 34.1 °C recorded at Heathrow. We haven't seen temperatures this hot in the UK since 19 July 2006, when 36.5 °C was recorded in Wisley, Surrey.'

That does make sense, when looking at xcweather I didn't realise it had an over 3 mile land track from that direction, and added to that the air over channel seems to be getting quite warm too due to the short sea track from France with mid to high 20's at other coastal sites and Sandettie light vessil 25C at Dungeness its self apparently, quite warm for somewhere right on the coast with an onshore wind, and I guess also it might only be a shallow layer of cooler air close to the water with the short sea track that easily gets mixed out once it meets land? Down here today (a few miles inland) it reached 25.1C earlier when the onshore breeze turned pretty light for a bit, now it's down to 22C though.

Blimey is that Lydd Airport reporting 31C with a 21mph onshore breeze?

Ah thanks, was thinking it might have been an error on the website, shows the very good stats for this region like most for the month.

Has SW England been disowned by the UK? lol Very good here really, today was dull with no sun though. 14 days over 25C and 10 in a row, and it seemed very sunny here much of the month, not sure exactly how sunny until end of month figures/reports/maps come out. Thundery activity was perhaps slightly disappointing with activity grazing me, though did see some flashes, and one surprise strong close CG a few days ago. probably at least an 8/10.

GFS keeps showing things looking like they will be good on Saturday, good pool of CAPE moving east, this at 3am.. Only for it to be virtually gone 6 hours later, and get even less through Saturday despite surface heating.. This seems to have happened a lot recently apart from one day, Ireland/Scotland get the best instability to the west while the near continent gets the big storms associated with warmer air masses, and not much in between most days.. and this pattern shows no sign of ending on the GFS :/ That's the problem with seeing a bit of convective action.. I want more lol.

Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but yesterday we had a few heavy showers here but when it became clear we were unlikely to get any thunderstorms here I thought sod it, I'm off east so went on a chase. I set off about 2:45pm and was actually successful in finding some action and had 3 separate thunderstorms! I ended up near Westbury, though worked out if I had set off this morning I could have had thunderstorms all day in an area south/SE of Bristol without moving much! The first cell was near Wincanton, Somerset. I was unable to get pictures of this storm when driving, but this was it as it moved off: However off to the north convection was building nicely, and growing into nice Cumulonimbus clouds. Each pic slightly after the previous: I didn't actually think I would go for these (was gunna go south a bit and incase showers further west intensified) but did go towards them in the end. From a different position further NE, this point frequent thunder was coming from this Cb (that didn't fit in the cameras field of view): Closer to the storm, thunder not so frequent though: After this I was under some heavy rain with thunder and lightning at times from the storms and got stuck in traffic that seemed to be caused by a traffic light system not working near Frome or Trowbridge (maybe caused by lightning?) These are those storms moving off: New convection had been forming a CB on the back of the other cells and was producing occasional thunder by this point: Close up of its convection: some convection to my north on the back side of the cells moving off looked interesting as it seemed to form into a shape that makes it appear the updraught might have been rotating to some extent, with an interesting lowering that I thought could it be trying to form a funnel but thought might be scud at the time. Looks interesting on photos though. a zoomed in image, the lowering to the left of the tree looks possibly suspect, with the sun shining on the end of it? this image was actually taken just before the one above. I don't think it lasted long though. Funnel or scud, would be interesting to see what others think? A 3rd storm was forming and producing well defined rain shafts: I moved a mile or so further east where this gave pretty intense rain and the wind picked up, though I have this on video not pictures. It did cause some flooding of lanes though: The 3rd storm moves off: After this a new heavy shower formed near sunset: I also saw on the way home one main road through Westbury was closed due to flooding, didn't get a very good view but looked quite deep and a couple people were carrying an inflatable boat. Also made a timelapse from home with a webcam taking images every 5 seconds, no thunderstorms but some convective showers and a nice sunset: Oops I might have gone a bit over the top with the pictures lol. I missed most lightning for various reasons but did manage to capture one small bit on camera, which will only attatch below at the end of the post for some reason.

Had a brief very heavy shower here earlier - and some quite good clouds around at times. No thunder here though so far, oh to be just south of Bristol at the moment.

Perhaps, if some would give it a go themselves, and try and do better than them on average over a period of time while covering possible threats with forecasts and warnings, they would get a sense of how hard and complex it can be no matter what data models and computers they had, and we wouldn't get these ridiculous posts sometimes. There has been a lot of heavy rain around this evening, and thunder in the SE similar to what was expected with that aspect really (if anything the storms further N were more unexpected so the UK has had more thunder than we could have had).

Lol! hope he's not as unlucky as whatever got hit by the single surprise CG here earlier! (I'm wondering if there is a slight chance it was a positive bolt with it's brightness and explosive thunder)

Doesn't that possibly mean you are about to be struck by lightning lol

Well, that was a one bolt wonder for now, very unexpected but was out in the garden looking in the right direction (west) seemed a mile or two away going by the 5-10 second thunder arrival time, though very loud thunder sounded a bit like an explosion! the thunder also seemed to come from the north as well as west too. ATD shows 2 strikes though so maybe I missed one, didn't hear a second rumble/bang though. Had a 5 minute heavy downpour now eased off to light rain again.

Amazing diagonal CG and shotgun thunder! :O

Something looking increasingly interesting to my south, getting darker with increasingly well defined rain shaft, and just heard thunder!

Think I could have just heard thunder! not sure but sounded like it from in my bedroom with the window open. next quite high based shower is grazing me now.

Just had a brief very heavy shower, more went west of here but it had some very big thundery drops in. Interesting line of heavy showers south of here with sefrics in too now! didn't really expect this.

Indeed, though I've seen a couple people mention FI and settled charts there as if they should not be spoken about due to being in FI, only to then talk about/focus on it themselves when it is showing cooler unsettled weather.. I don't think there should be a problem with people talking about FI as long as they don't speak as though it's anywhere near a certainty.. but then again, when was this cooler fresher westerly Atlantic air first meant to arrive? I'm still waiting.

Here the top half of our lawn is basically dead with no sign of green at all, and also grass in fields for hay or cattle isn't growing much, and various other plants or vegetation could do with some rain so our wildlife and ecosystem would benefit from some now. Apart from a bit of rain the other night there has been nearly no rain this July here after a very dry June. So I would like us to get some rain shouldn't be a problem if we do anyway. This animation is quite good to get an ides of the general movement of things: http://www.meteox.co.uk/h.aspx?r=&jaar=-3&soort=satradar I think the SW will have better chances at some thunder tomorrow or Monday, and maybe an interesting plume later next week? though it's a bit far off yet.

We have wasps that like our back fence, usually 3 on it now at least, and I have recently also seen them on our old garden bench.. can actually hear them 'munching' on the wood on the fence sometimes. Presumably means there's a nest nearby.. yay. Had two in the house yesterday too for the first time this year.

Although there has been some ramping I think quite a bit of what I have seen has just been speculation/discussing, that's all my earlier post was aimed to be at least, speculation of a possible interesting weather event. I wouldn't want this thread to just be robotic emotionless 'this model shows this, that model shows that' and nothing else really. Although referring to some earlier posts, I wouldn't expect record breaking temps from the ECM, would probably need slightly longer and lighter winds for conditions to become more favourable near the surface, although a brief plume in June 2011 had people saying it wouldn't get into the 30's with not enough time for heat to build, and it reached 33C. Just for a speculative idea of temps if the ECM came off, it showed 32C in some places in the east at midday (Wunderground weather model maps), so could rise a few degrees higher by 4pm? The likes of the ECM may be outliers on the ensembles, but that's the latest operationals of the ECM, GFS and GEM all bringing 20c+ uppers over the UK, and possibly the UKMO too with a decent plume there though it could be slightly cooler. Has to be considered one of the potential outcomes, even if not considered 'likely' at this stage? Obviously there is lots going on before/after this in the models, though I don't really have time to look into that at this time so will leave it for others to correct it themselves if they feel there's an imbalance or one sided bias of posts in here.

ECM goes bang.. Look at those uppers over the south and also down over France, if you look really closely there's a spot of 28C uppers near Bordeaux! (Edit: as shown by posts above too). The GEM also has 20+ uppers widely and even has them touching 24C in the SE! L Looks like the ECM might do that too if there was a t+174 chart.. UKMO also looks to go bang with a thundery very warm plume brought north by the developing low to our west Interesting potential for a (probably brief) plume of notably hot air to be drawn up from the south, the only other time I've seen 22C+ uppers over the UK in the archives is August 2003 when 22C uppers touched the south, and also maybe one or two other brief plumes in the past. A bit to far off to really be confident of this especially with this kind of set up, though we are in a possibly interesting pattern at the moment and interesting to see the potential. The GFS developes less of a plume than the other 3 models in this post this evening. This is quite a good pattern for me as tbh I would prefer a more changeable but warm flavour to the weather at times now, even better if next weeks plume comes off. Things need rain, and I have got my warm/hot dry fix now, time for some alternate interest or convective action.