Storms and Convective discussion - May 2024

[Rush2019]

Looks like a cell SW of a Worcester has electrified.

[Cain]

Some showers close to my location wonder if I’ll catch anything from a distance 

[Eagle Eye]

Thick stratiform cloud + high saturation. Means today is significantly under what was modelled by the UKV which rarely does well forecasting trailing cloud regions. 

[TJS1998Tom]

So might be an early start, forecast suggesting thunderstorms around 7am

[ChannelThunder]

A lot of people on Facebook seem to think that this lot is going to slam into S UK later. Good luck to them with that 

 

[Flash bang flash bang etc]

Hate to dampen ppls hopes in the south but it’s highly likely we won’t have storms this evening. Don’t waste time watching the continent it’s not gonna happen.

[Josh Rubio]

The milky skies and clouds are breaking up and the sun and blue skies are returning. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing for development. 

[Arnie Pie]

Invisible through the milkyness there are some strengthening cells approaching North Birmingham which will be worth keeping an eye on.

[Cain]

Doesn’t look good tonight to much cloud around I think 

[Jamie M]

Lightning shots from yesterday

[biddie]

 Paul Rpretty impressive  Paul R

[TJS1998Tom]

Looks like I might be up until 4am with there being a risk despite, thankfully not in work till 2pm

[Shaunado]

 

Edited May 2 by Shaunado

[Purplepixii]

For the knowledgeable here, had last night’s storm produced a “superbolt” (either in the U.K. or France) would we know? I assume scientists monitor storms and there’d be data, somewhere?

[biddie]

 wimblettben there were stoms in the sea moving away from ireland i think

 

[weatherobsuk]

 Purplepixii There was definitely one positive strike that I saw from my location away from the main core and I suspect could have been the one that hit the nursing home at Elmer given it was in that general area directly south, there was a Sprite less than 1/2 a second before the entire sky in that direction completely lit-up whilst every-other lightning flash I saw mostly required averted vision to see.

UK weather: Thunderstorm warning after storms hit UK overnight

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

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Storms move into the Midlands and Wales after lightning causes damage in southern England overnight.

 

[Turquoise]

really glad I decided to ignore the storm warning this time and go out for a picnic, was a lovely day. As I said earlier I treat any storm warning up here now as basically meaning it will be a gorgeous day and so it again proved today, warm and sunny all day. They are always wrong. Very hard to take seriously when they are always so far off the mark. I think I counted 48 occasions last summer where we had thunderstorm warnings alongside potential flash flooding and didnt have a single drop of rain each time lol. Not complaining though, warmest day of the year today. 

[Dangerous55019]

 Rush2019 Sadly I feel it was not enough to trigger anything today.

It tried… But hey… Something just didn’t feel quite right. Hey ho… 

Finger crossed that we’ll have more luck as the summer progresses.

[Dangerous55019]

Right folks… That’s it… I’m throwing in the towel on this one today.

Although so much seemed right for something to go bang today… There was always so much that didn’t seem right as well. But hey… The storm season is still young.

So before I say over and out for the day… I’ll leave you all with latest rainfall radar and lightning strikes map… Hopefully they’ll be of some use to someone else this evening.

Over and out from Storm Starved in North East Wales. 

[Eagle Eye]

Convective Outlook️ 

A new Theta-E centre of advection glides NW towards the east and perhaps more focused towards the NE of England, perhaps into Southern Scotland. Early to mid morning showers and storms should start forming by the coast, perhaps clustering up for a time.

 

With 400+ J/KG of MLCAPE and modest lift there is risk for some sporadic to semi frequent lightning. However saturation is high. Lightning risk is likely to be limited but alternatively storms could be quite tall, up to around 9km. So it's a balance.

 

Hail has a small chance of forming because the height of freezing is still relatively low. Weak CAPE and poor shearing limit it to small sized haul though.

 

Main risk is semi-frequent lightning mid to late morning in the slight risk movimg NW and weakening into the afternoon with more trailing behind but weaker further. Some heavy rainfall possible within the stronger storms in the NE as well. Clustering risks a small chance of flash flooding in bigger clusters.

[StormLoser]

Good heavens - after abandoning the Reigate area, I might yet be in for a little luck in Durham!  That will be some mild compensation at least for my self-induced bust!  

Thanks for cheering me up @Eagle Eye!

[Eagle Eye]

 StormLoser

Energy tomorrow mid morning could be in excess of 1000 J/KG of MUCAPE. It's another weird scenario because of the showers and storms coming from the SE moving NW but sometimes those are the best. 

[TwisterGirl81]

What was the rainfall totals for areas that got hit by the torrential rain and thunderstorms? Overnight we clocked up 28.2mm of rainfall and unless I slept through it we didn’t get a thunderstorm just heavy rain 

Edited May 2 by TwisterGirl81

[Southern Storm]

 ChannelThunder Thanks for the heads up and letting me know that one of my photos was on the main BBC news feed, I had no idea it had been featured, it was a nice surprise.

So what can be said about last other than what a crazy evening it ended up being, especially after a day of checking the latest models to see which areas stud the best chance of seeing storms, but of course there was a lot of chopping and changing going on with the various models.

There were a few niggling doubts in the back of my mind which got me thinking about throwing in the towel and calling it a day, But in the end, the chance of seeing a thunderstorm was too hard to refuse, so I decided to head out just before midnight and travel to Portsdown hill, which was around an hours drive away and the storms weren't forecast to arrive until after 1am so off I set. 

Once I arrived, I only had to wait around half an hour to 45 minutes before lightning could be seen in the distance to the east. At the beginning it was just sheet lightning but as the storm got closer I started seeing a few CGs thrown in, but they were definitely in the minority, almost all of the lightning was of intra-cloud, and another positive was that the thunder was quite small loud. I was expecting it to be a little bit meh because of the elevated nature of the storms, but that wasn't the case at all.

Anyway I could ramble on and on about last night, but i woke up at at 6:30 yesterday and haven't had any sleep since  

I have a bit of video footage from last night that a need to look through and edit, that can wait for the weekend, but here are some photos from The early hours of this morning.

All in all, an epic start to the convective season, with more chances to come! and with any luck, other parts of the country that have so far missed out, hopefully you will get your turn in the not too distant future!

SS 

 

Edited May 2 by Southern Storm

[viking_smb]

 Azazel  your comment last night about going for a poo had me chuckling, (and probably other members here)