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South East - Severe Thunderstorms Of 02-03 July 2009


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Posted
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast
  • Weather Preferences: Severe Storms and Snow
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast

The worst of it went up more eastern areas of kent , sittingbourne was bone dry!

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

Just thought I would post this here as the more general discussion is now locked.

As some may recall, I mentioned a forecast of a strong MCS based on research concepts, and this both verified to some extent and busted to some extent for inland parts of southeast England. Here are some thoughts on that in general.

As people will remember, there were two elements in this complex, a sort of double MCS if you like, one part near Calais that came across to clobber east Kent as Neil (and also someone reporting from Margate) reported in detail. The other MCS drifted north from the French coast near Le Havre almost all the way to Sussex before weakening slowly about 0200.

The life cycle on these was close to what I had expected, a peak of energy between 2330 and 0130 GMT (0030 to 0230 BST) but the anticyclonic rotation seemed to slow down over the Channel, then when the cells reached land they resumed the expected speed north and northeast but in a weakened condition (weaker than I had imagined from the estimate peak of energy). The eastern MCS behaved about as expected, went on to hit parts of Essex then rotated back around and sheared apart in the advancing southerly upper winds. Part of it was absorbed into the main front around Newcastle, and part of it went southeast towards Belgium and western Holland where it is now quite active again.

The research concept has to do with my ongoing investigation of how solar system magnetic fields leave an imprint in our magnetic field and upper atmosphere. What happens at the surface is a fairly predictable result of what happens higher up.

In this case, the idea was that the two elements would reach the top of a loop (oriented NW-SE and rotating around a point off the coast of Belgium) as follows, the outer loop around 2330 GMT and the inner loop around 0130 GMT. The inner loop would be catching up to the outer loop and passing it later around 0600 (but by then everything was expected to be east of the UK coast). Instead, the outer loop slowed down and phased with the inner loop from about 2330 to 0130, and only some higher anvil cloud went on the expected faster journey around, until about 0600 when the outer loop began to collapse altogether. So that will give me some material to think about. The same processes over the U.S. midwest, of course, have no cold ocean water to deal with, and yet on occasion I have seen a similar process where the combined MCS seems to slow down. Also, most MCS formations in the U.S. tend to form near the top rather than the bottom of these loops and move southeast then south, rather than northwest then north. I think this is mostly due to climatology, the UK is most prone to an MCS when it is hot in France and Belgium. But I have seen weaker examples of an American-style MCS from a northwest starting point.

There is a cycle of 2.6 days in these loop alignments (the inner feature passes the outer feature every 2.6 days) so the next one of these should be around 2.6 days from 0600 today, or let's say about July 5 20z (2100 BST) at which time the loops should be aligned near the top rather than the bottom of the rotation. The whole system may be further east by then, but if there's a good display of this I will come back into this thread and mention where it is and what it's doing (quite possibly it would be over Denmark and northwest Germany).

There are other energy loops in this same complex system but they tend to form fronts or squall lines not MCS clusters, and their alignments (bringing energy peaks) are on the order of 3.5 days. One of those is expected tomorrow and may interact with the system moving in from the southwest of the UK tonight.

Of course, all of this could be just coincidence, I have no way of measuring these energy flows directly or doing a control experiment where the sources of the energy are removed. However, I have been watching these processes in detail over here for about 15 years now, and in the UK for the past four years, so I am gaining confidence that they are real. The problem is always that as you get closer to event time, conventional meteorology begins to converge on the research solution and the "cause and effect" appears to be surface-based processes. However, if you can predict well in advance when strong MCS systems may develop, this makes it more possible that there is the external cause for the noted effects. It may be a while until the next similar MCS develops as the whole system will be further east for a week or two, but the larger loops of energy will continue to hit the UK during their western extents.

Anyway, I'm glad some people on NW got the full effects of this MCS, apparently it was even stronger in northern France, as I mentioned on the active thread, Le Touquet reported a wind gust to 54 mph (at about 9 pm) and some other place southeast of Calais reported 1 cm hail stones. Also in the seeding of the western MCS cluster, north of Paris, an observer reported 70 mm of rain in one hour.

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Posted
  • Location: South Norfolk, 44 m ASL.
  • Weather Preferences: Varied and not extreme.
  • Location: South Norfolk, 44 m ASL.

Mr Smith - if it helps your calculations, S. Norfolk had a storm pass through sometime just after 4 am today.

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Posted
  • Location: SE,London (Catford)
  • Location: SE,London (Catford)
Did london get any storms last night as i was asleep?. This morning when i woke up there were puddles, so it had obviously rained but im not about thunder and lightning.

About 3:30 am this morning..just heavy rain. no lightning or anything.

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Posted
  • Location: Folkestone, Kent
  • Location: Folkestone, Kent

I've spoken to a few people at work today and most managed to sleep through the storm. Strangely these are all from Margate/Broadstairs – 3 – 6 miles further East than me so perhaps it wasn't so bad on the furthest point.

The local news website reports how the storms kept the fire services busy, including the worst fire being within my village. SouthEastern Trains were reporting on their website early this morning that a late Charing Cross - Ramsgate train was 90 minutes late out of Dover due to "Signalling Problems" - quite often this happens down in that area as it usually bears the worst of the storms.

I noticed on the bus to work that the Westgate golf course (2pm this afternoon) had a new and rather large Water Hazard; even this evening after a very humid day many large puddles are still evident along with wet looking soil.

I think the most amazing thing about this storm is how it went from being miles away for well over an hour, to suddenly being 6 or so miles away with the next increment less than a minute later being overhead! I unplugged the dish cable + tv cable from the Sky box, plus unplugged the mains on the TV and computers aswell as the phone line - not often I have to take such extreme precautions as the storms aren't usually that bad. The moon earlier in the evening changed from the usual white colour to a really deep red as the high cloud coming up from the south started to cover it; never seen anything quite like it (except during rise/set and eclipses of course)

I did manage to get a couple of photos (hope that link works) although it was incredibly difficult due to the sheer volume of rain pouring off the gutter in front of the window as well as the rain hitting the window itself. I certainly won't forget that storm in a hurry - especially how quickly I closed the patio door when two strikes side by side came down not too far ahead of me.

Edited by J-Me
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Posted
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast
  • Weather Preferences: Severe Storms and Snow
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast

Nicely done J-Me , added you as a contact on flickr :good:

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