24Th July 2009 Storms

[maidstone weather]

Hi all, sorry it's late, I've been working since 1pm and only just got in - but boy what a day!

Firstly, frequent torrential downpours this morning, along a discrete line, gave us 12.9mm by 11:38, making it the 2nd wettest day of the year before midday!

No thunder during the morning, but some of the most torrential downpours I have ever seen!

I went to work around 1pm, it chucked it down briefly whilst driving the 10 miles to Cranbrook (south of Maidstone) but for most of the afternoon it stayed dry and relatively sunny from what I could see out of the window at work (Cranbrook).

I left at 4:50pm for my dinner break. Upon leaving the entrance to the supermarket I work in, immediately the clouds grabbed my attention. To my east there was a lot of low, black scud rapidly moving in different directions. Overhead the cloud was the plain 'milky white' but to my northwest the clouds were smooth and purple, typical of a storm. I could see hail curtains coming down to my northeast and distant constant rumbling.

I have been informed by a few people that a storm moved over my house around 4:30pm, which I did not see in Cranbrook (that's how localised these things are). The storm over my house:

Once I had indentified the storms were all to my north, I decided to have a mini storm chase during my lunch break and quickly hopped in the car and drove into Maidstone (13 miles). As i drove there i noticed huge towering anvils ahead of me, somewhere over the Thames Estuary i presume, whilst the storm i was initially chasing actually moved eastwards whilst i drove north, and it wasn't long before i was under clear blue skies. By 5:20pm i gave up, and turned round to drive back to work.

However... once i had turned the car round, I noticed huge CB's to my south - right where I had just come from! Bearing in mind i had no access to radar at the time, I didn't realise there were cells approaching my work from the west! I drove back as quickly as I could, arriving back at work around 5:45pm.

It took a while for things to finally get going, and by the looks of it we only scraped the northern edge of the storm, the majority of it went over Hawkhurst (4 miles south of Cranbrook).

However, I sat in my car for a good 30 minutes, with the window wound down and watched the various forks and sheet lightning accompanied by very loud thunder, loud and boomy enough to shake the car!

It was great

18.1mm is the total today- this month is definitely above average in terms of rainfall!

[That GFS]

Brilliant!

Will add my video too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cjE3fqCsc8

Not much in the way of lightning with this storm , but the cloud formations were very good!

[maidstone weather]

Forgot to mention, the temp dropped from 17C before the storm to 11C in the storm!

and before the storm began, about 20 mins before, you could see the fantastic structure in it's entirety. The central colum, anvil and outflow were all very visible, with the outflow from the anvil circling in what looked like a perfectly symmetrical circle! amazing stuff.

Never done this before, so hope it works.

Managed to upload a couple of pics i took with my phone

[becca123]

hi, im also from kent, around the ashford and kent area, and ive took some pictures of the weather, as thought the clouds were roatating! never seen anything like it!