SteveElbows

Look at CV11 on the radar. Lines are strengthening in all sorts of directions, with the closest just to my east. Getting dark here now. I am recording view to the east but my vantage point isnt so great.

Im really not sure how long it will all last, the 06Z NMM has everything fading out before dark.

Well I made it home from work with my new video camera but its calming down significantly here, Ive no idea if its supposed to pick up again later for my location, Im giving up guessing today.

Yeah loud and repeated rumbles around Nuneaton although we've escaped much of the rain so far, action in almost every direction but I am at work now, pah.

Cheers, I just aught the edge of it, it was not quite proper hail here but could tell that it was right on the edge of being hail, probably a teensy bit further east and north of my location at the time.

Ta for the info. I suppose my opinion was partly based on them downgrading the amount of rain forecast for my location during the day today, but something is brewing to the immediate south of me and in general the mid to east midlands is doing ok now. My new camera has arrived but the memory stick for it is at work, 20 mins walk away, think Im going to have to wait for half and hour and see how things progress in my area.

Ah I see the met have left quite a swath across the middle on england & wales free from their flash warnings. I call on the weather gods to seek revenge for this, even though Im sure its based on some important fundamentals.

On another (non-weather) forum someone has reported thunder near Fulham.

Interesting intensity on the radar north of Birmingham.

Yeah both the 00Z NMM, the met forecast and the present radar make me suspect such a thing. But time will tell eh.

Good luck to the Gloucester people today, and everyone else who could potentially get something later. Ive downgraded my expectations for here but still hope o catch a sniff of something later. Especially as I am sitting here waiting for a new video camera to be delivered, woo, thats cursed my chances

Im still waking up but it looks like the 00Z took a lot of the action much further south west and the met forecast has removed pretty much all of the daytime heavy showers from my location.

Ahh I would have likely just missed that September 93 event by moving to Lancaster a week or so before it happened. Any ideas where I could learn more about storms of the mid nineties as I remember a few great ones in the 1994-1996 timeframe in Nuneaton and also Skegness on one occasion that I was lucky enough to go there on the right night. That was a strange day because me and a friend just went up there in his car with little money and were going to lurk near a beach all night in peace, but a huge rave turned up and then later the police, then finally thunderstorms that were rather more interesting than what the humans in the area were doing. As for the reasons why some things keep going overnight, although I dont understand stuff properly enough to start throwing around terms like I know what the mean, but just within recent days on this forum I have heard something about nocturnal cooling of cloud tips helping, at least in certain setups. Come on Geoff CAPEs, I need your strength tomorrow

Im not capable of a proper explanation but I guess some showers dont need the sun or daytime peak temperatures to flourish, they are sustained by something else. Ive just been looking at the met forecasts for tomorrow, indeed they do mention the magic thunder word for overnight/after midnight in places such as wales, the north west, and more northerly parts of the west midlands, in their written weather summaries. However the tabular forecasts they are offering seem to suggest it will be 4am that you get heavy rain showers, and many places will be waiting a fair bit longer than that. They have decided to give you a thunder shower graphic for 4pm tomorrow! They have not bestowed that graphic on most places, although the risk seems fairly widespread. Other places Ive seen them use the thunder shower graphic for the 4pm slot tomorrow are Welshpool, Crewe, Manchester, Gainsborough, Exeter. Beautiful busy skies here today, no activity though, even the rain that was coming fizzled out. The models give me some hope for tomorrow.

Stuff flaring up east of stoke according to the NW radar and perhaps a lighting strike in that area too?

My garden has suddenly become full of flying ants, didnt see any here yesterday.

Merseyside floods story on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-10702593

Well it is the stuff thats south west of exeter thats on the models as slapping my area around a bit in 3 hours or more, with Gloucester about to benefit from some stuff much sooner but presently looking rather light, although something might just be starting to bubble just below you, bit premature of me to say though and Im not liking the lack of lightning.

Yeah its been trending that way on the models for a while now and the reality seems to match, at least for the daytime. Lets see what progress the lower tail of the rain band can make eastwards from now on. If I look back at the met forecast for my area they certainly changed their tune when it came to the daytime, I went from lots of rain to almost none. But since they started showing thunder for my location it was always labelled as happening at night, then as the detail emerged they said 1am, then by this morning they had removed the thunder from my location altogether and now give me heavy rain at 1am and 4am (although their invent map suggests it will nearly have passed me by 1am).

Just been looking at the 12Z GFS and it does seem to be showing an increased reluctance for the interesting storm risk to progress further east across the slightly more southern parts of the midlands. Certainly as best I can tell the interestingly messy storm risk graphics for my location between 9pm-3am arent quite as interesting as they were, although there is still just enough potential for this area during that timeframe that I wont quite lose all hope yet.

In my rather oversimplified world of staring at a few bits of data that the models spit out, and that I may not understand properly, I would say dont give up all hope till midnight today for your location.

Now here is a silly question - do we know pretty accurately where the cold front is rightnow and whether its pace is fitting pretty well with the models? Does the current heavy rain band give an accurate sense of the cold fronts location? Is the front on the eastern edge of the rainband, or a bit further east of it, or to the west? Looks like both to me - some real but light rain and some radar mess in the area, mostly slightly further south and east than the actual rain. But I am new at this so I might be well wrong.

Ta very much for all the respones to my question about the lightning detector. I started looking at various ones last week, and on multiple days I heard or saw strikes near here and they didnt always show up, or perhaps showed up in the wrong place, and from what you are all saying it seems my experience is fairly typical. Anyway hoorah and joy to those who are now getting some action. I was lucky last week and was close to the middle of the action on a number of days, but have yet to tick the boxes for hail, pant-wettingly close lightning, or lightning after dark for this season yet, so Im still hungry.

The IOW lightning strike detector? Its now showing one strike, in the North Sea off Scotland. Im not sure how much faith I place in the data from these detectors, but Im new to this and open to opinions, do they get the distance and direction wrong much?

The models Ive looked at have the tail of the rain band moving west but not till quite late in the evening and there are just a few hours of opportunity before it clears north (window of opportunity for me may be 9pm-1am). Although the position & timing has not remained consistent between models and runs, roughly the same thing has been in my head for a few days now, that there is a chance of storms after dark, but Im really not all that confident. However a part of me still thinks it might go ape later.