Convective Outlook

[Thundery wintry showers]

Although at first it seemed this week would hold somewhat more convective activity than has actually happened, the problem remained that upper temperatures remained too high for decent convection - so cloud tops would have been low, thus showers would not have been potent, and was close to zero chance of any lightning activity in any heavy showers that did develop.

Aye, and the other factor that I didn't give full consideration to: if the potency is low to begin with then it won't take as much downgrading for it to disappear almost completely!

[Andy Bown]

how crazy by now we have usually had a small thunderstorm but so far this year just one crack of thunder which was full of treble and had no bass, it was soo wimpy I want a window shaker!!!! >.> heres hopeing for some good convection this summer!!

Most of the chances of thunderstorms this year has been way to the north or west!

and they say the south east gets the most lightning!!!!!!! pfft!

Oh my life!

It's May 15th mate, get a grip!

Some of us haven't seen lightning for about 20 months!!

[A.J]

how crazy by now we have usually had a small thunderstorm but so far this year just one crack of thunder which was full of treble and had no bass, it was soo wimpy I want a window shaker!!!! >.> heres hopeing for some good convection this summer!!

Most of the chances of thunderstorms this year has been way to the north or west!

and they say the south east gets the most lightning!!!!!!! pfft!

Yep, I think Andy said it all!!...easy tiger!....good things come to those who wait

[Thundery wintry showers]

Although Mays traditionally are only slightly less thundery than the three summer months, it's not unusual for an individual May to be largely thunder-free, just like with any of the three summer months (e.g. there wasn't much thunder about during Augusts 1998, 2007 and 2009). Put a largely thunder-free March, April and May together, and you're left with many places waiting for their first thunderstorm of the year.

It would be exceedingly unusual, though, to have a string of well below average months thunder-wise stretching throughout the year, so chances are at least one of the three summer months will produce near or above average thunder activity. Even September occasionally does, e.g. I remember quite a thundery second half to September 1999.

[Stormyking]

I must say that here has been quite good for convection from wednesday onwards and to go with that we had an interesting day on thursday with A) plenty of heavyish showers in the afternoon with 2 of them had sleet with them IN MID MAY another thing was the funnel cloud and the amount of rotation in the clouds and last but not least a beutiful shelf cloud had developed which was overshooting an old CB which was behing a Heavy sleet curtan suprisingly .

Friday the day started off sunny and kinda chillyish but started to warm up and a developing CB started to develop at about 11:45am infront of my eyes and became bigger and bigger and the IOW had developed its own shower/showers, this had turned out to be a fairly big CB with some amazing colour in there and produced some very big spots of rain but the main of it was just to the East of me. As the afternoon went we kept getting hit by showers for a good few hours with 1 in particular gave heavy rain along with hail an dlasted for a good 30 minutes. We then got hit by another shower at about 3pm which then I found out it was the same shower I had got hit by before I got on the bus back home from college, though it had weekend by the time it got too Sandown which is where I went too and didnt have hail but was still pretty heavy rain with big spots. This turned out to be the last shower of the day and all of the showers that day died as they hit the sea.

So all in all a much better week in terms of a bit of action and interest in the weather and now fingers crossed for a hot and thunery summer

[Stuart]

Friday 21st Look Nice for me but long way off yet

[Craigers]

does look good with this very warm weather on thursday with friday's convection! lets hope it gets better

[Costa Del Fal]

The charts may show convection risk on Friday but wouldnt High pressure just be a limiting factor straight away?

Pointless getting hopes up for even a this range.

[Guest FireStorm]

Well the BBC weather forecast on TV mentioned humid with a chance of storms and 24c Friday. So 7c and overcast in a NE breeze eh?

No, I jest. much warmer for most I'd suspect this week and my 1st real chance at a thunderstorm for the year.

Think I'll wait until I see storm clouds and hear thunder before I get excited though. And won't be cutting my veins if it doesn't appear either.

[Stuart]

what part of the uk

[Guest FireStorm]

what part of the uk

If your asking myself, SE Apparently by BBC Television forecast but GFS is having absolutely none of it currently. Scotland, N England, N Wales looks far better by LI/CAPE values alone.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I must say that here has been quite good for convection from wednesday onwards

...

Fair enough- I think it's easy to be influenced by how one's specific location has been, and certainly this week has delivered convection-wise for some parts of the country, while other areas have seen very little.

The latter part of next week, as well as looking like featuring lots of warm sunshine, looks potentially interesting convection-wise, if any disturbances penetrate into the high and set off convection as some recent GFS runs have suggested. It's worth keeping an eye on, but at the same time, the sort of setup that can easily be downgraded to nothing in the space of a couple of runs!

Some heavy showers getting going over north-east England at the moment according to the radar, so the storm potential mentioned by Weather09 has a chance of coming to fruition.

[Stuart]

I am looking fowrad to my 1st storm of the year if the gfs dont move it south or bin it

[Stuart]

Look like the gfs moved the storms south on this run

[Andy Bown]

Some very heavy downpours heading East through Wiltshire/Berkshire/Hampshire and towards the London area, rainfall rates over 200mm per hour in some of the cells!

Just one heavy shower here this afternoon after a damp morning, 5mm in the gauge so the month is still only at 15mm and a dry week to come!

[Noctilucid]

Under a train of very heavy downpours at the moment, trust the only significant precipitation in Westen Europe to be over my head, while I'm out walking.

Some interesting turbulent skies however.

[Neilsouth]

Awesome clouds earlier , very fast moving mammatus!

[Mesoscale]

Had some very heavy rainfull earlier i could hear it over my tumble dryer going, my tumble dryer is very noisey and it woke my next door neighbours baby up also had some decent flooding in the back garden! all at about 4:45 - 5pm best rainfull ive seen this year so far heres hopeing for friday! Anyone know where there predicting the best chances of seeing a thunderstorm i know its early but id like to get an idea!

[Coast]

Another week of nothing really interesting for storm lovers?

Seems like the low countries get any fun today:

[Thundery wintry showers]

Some convection showing up in eastern England today- I think any thunderstorms will be isolated, but some places will see some pretty sharp showers.

[Stuart]

Sunday look good for storms but that will change

[sunny scunny]

There was a brief hailstorm here a few hours ago, and it's back to being sunny and warm again now.

[Stuart]

Look like storm risk have moved more sorth for the weekend

[Nick F]

Does look good for England and Wales on Saturday and Sunday on the 12z, though too futile this far out to give further comment.

[Thundery wintry showers]

Some convection showing up in eastern England today- I think any thunderstorms will be isolated, but some places will see some pretty sharp showers.

In the end the convection appeared to largely fizzle out this afternoon although there are a few sharp showers still scattered about- probably a result of the advancing high pressure.

The weekend certainly does look interesting, though I've seen these setups downgrade to nothing from T+72 before- it all depends on the positioning of the high and whether any forcing mechanisms get involved. GFS often overdoes CAPE at this range.