The English Channel; Where Thunderstorms Go To Die

[Fen Wolf]

Title says it all really!  How many times have you seen on radar a spectacular show only for it to be dead as a dodo as the now just rain hits  

 

such a shame because if rain crosses from the uk to france, it can easily fire up

 

Many many times I have been expecting a great lightning show only to be deeply disappointed  

i know i ain’t the only one here too.  
 

please share your greatest stories of how spectacular it was in the channel and then a no show as it hit uk shores once more 

️

[Sprites]

 Fen Wolf  

 

[Fen Wolf]

 Sprites i like this photo, reminds me of something long ago but cannot remember what ️

Edited April 4 by Fen Wolf

[Sprites]

 Fen Wolf When you were a wolf disguised as a sheep?  

[Fen Wolf]

 Sprites maybe  

 

 Now i am just a wolf 

[Summer8906]

What about, for a contra-case, those bizarre thunderstorms of March 31st?

Certainly some of the strangest I've seen of my lifetime.

The day wasn't especially humid by recent standards, nor was it especially warm.

There was a large slack low, and front moving up from the SW, but I'd have expected general frontal rain, not storms.

I guess they were driven by unseasonably high SSTs. Storms off the channel in slack, unstable Atlantic air are quite common in autumn, so are we starting to see weather at this time of year which would have previously been restricted to the warm-sea season? I remember similar happenings in October in the past, but never, ever in early spring.

Edited April 7 by Summer8906

[Mapantz]

The majority of storms that erupt in France are surface based. If they move north, they won't survive the channel unless they become rooted in to the boundary layer. Elevated storms do cross the channel and survive, but often with a northeast trajectory, and lightning is less likely on the western flank of an MCS, for example, and we end up with a Kent clipper.

If we have plume set up, and some kind of forcing element from the west or southwest, by way of a cold front, then storms will erupt in the channel itself and trundle north.

It's more a question of; why don't we see these kind of synoptics anymore? Rather than asking; why don't storms survive as they cross the channel?