August 5th/6th 1981 severe thunderstorms

[Sunny76]

Does anyone have any photos of this event?

Maybe my memory has played tricks on me, but I do remember the daytime turning to night(not just dark, it went completely black outside)

Were flights rerouted that day, because I’m assuming landing in that storm would have been difficult. 

Does anyone remember it?

[Weather-history]

1 hour ago, Sunny76 said:

Does anyone have any photos of this event?

Maybe my memory has played tricks on me, but I do remember the daytime turning to night(not just dark, it went completely black outside)

Were flights rerouted that day, because I’m assuming landing in that storm would have been difficult. 

Does anyone remember it?

 

[stainesbloke]

I remember it well. The sky did indeed turn to night for a while and the thunderstorms were violent with a lot of lightning and torrential downpours. 3 engineers at Heathrow were injured by lightning and pilots reported cloud tops approaching 60,000 feet, apparently. 

[Sunny76]

On 05/06/2019 at 18:09, stainesbloke said:

I remember it well. The sky did indeed turn to night for a while and the thunderstorms were violent with a lot of lightning and torrential downpours. 3 engineers at Heathrow were injured by lightning and pilots reported cloud tops approaching 60,000 feet, apparently. 

I just can’t imagine what they would look like. Didn’t June 1980 have similar storms during the day? I know that was also a very thundery period. 

Its weird how there’s no footage of this storm. Would have been interesting to see a newsflash from August 6th 1981 covering the event. 

[stainesbloke]

1 hour ago, Sunny76 said:

I just can’t imagine what they would look like. Didn’t June 1980 have similar storms during the day? I know that was also a very thundery period. 

Its weird how there’s no footage of this storm. Would have been interesting to see a newsflash from August 6th 1981 covering the event. 

I’ve witnessed 3 daytime thunderstorms in the UK that made the streetlights go on but the 1981 one was the most severe, by far. It’s incredibly eerie. There are some photographs online of the dark skies from newspapers but not much else. I’d love to see a satellite pic!

[Sunny76]

23 minutes ago, stainesbloke said:

I’ve witnessed 3 daytime thunderstorms in the UK that made the streetlights go on but the 1981 one was the most severe, by far. It’s incredibly eerie. There are some photographs online of the dark skies from newspapers but not much else. I’d love to see a satellite pic!

St. Paul’s in the darkness. I remember seeing that photo.

I really hope we see another storm like that at some stage. It’s bound to happen eventually, it’s just a case of when. 

I think July 1992 came close to being very dark, as the thunderstorms were building during the hot sunny afternoon.

Cant remember the date, but we were travelling back to London from Margate(after being at Ben Bon Brothers lol), between 6-8pm. The day was hot and sunny around 28-29 degrees.

We noticed the sky turned much darker as we travelled back towards London. Violent thunderstorms broke out and lasted for several hours.