Best storm you've ever seen in the UK

[Thunders]

the one for me was 18-19th of June 2019, here we saw over 1000 lightning strikes per hour at one point. i remember walking to the window at about 9:30 and just seeing the lightning over the channel, almost constantly. the storm lasted well into the overnight hours till about 1-2am on 19th June. another much weaker storm rolled in about 5-7am. I remember watching in aw as i saw the whole towns power grid shut off one section at a time. I'm guessing I can call this one a supercell?

[MP-R]

There are already some great descriptions in this thread of events that also affected here but here are a list of dates:

17th May 1997

- one of my earliest clear memories of a thunderstorm in the UK. I was in central Bristol at the time it happened… it went exceedingly dark and the fall of large hail was impressive, as much as the T&L.

27th & 29th May 1999

- enough said on these ones already but prolific lightning and thunder from nighttime TS late on the 27th, and daytime darkness on the 29th.

04th July 2001

- I think three batches of very active thunderstorms moved through: 4-5am, 7-8am and again around 10am. Lots of flooding.

28th June 2005

- the 24th was impressive enough but the sheer electrical activity this one pumped out was incredible, as well as the almost roll cloud appearance of it moving in late evening.

10th May 2006

- MCS moving west and bring nearly 6 hours of thunder and lightning. Decent hail too.

23rd July 2013

- not only my 21st birthday but the first time I remember an electrical storm in this country with hardly any rain.

18th September 2014

- I think this storm was more impressive than the July ones. The lightning was most impressive with a number of anvil crawlers.

27th May 2017

- probably in the top 5 most intense storms I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen Brazilian and US storms. Had there been palm trees in the garden it would’ve liked like a tropical storm. Non stop Lightning, incredibly torrential lashing rain and a constant rumbling of thunder.

19th July 2017

- quite similar to the May ones but slightly less severe and less rainfall.

24th July 2019

- another electrical storm with little rain, again almost on my birthday as it started at midnight. I stood in the garden for a while watching the high frequency lightning before it got very close.

12th August 2020

- classic microburst style storm after the hottest day of the year. Briefly very intense rainfall and strong down draft style winds before it moved off and gave an almost constant lightning display.

05th September 2022

- although thunder was less frequent than other storms, what thunder there was was incredibly loud. Most notable was the lashing rain and incidence of almost rain fog as the visibility dropped markedly during its passing. All of this watched from the undercover outdoor jacuzzi at my gym haha.

 

I have vague memories of some absolute humdingers in the mid 90s as a young child but can’t be sure of dates.

[Badgers01]

April 2001 amazing localised I assume severe storm over Hackney East London , never seen any reference to it anywhere else …? 

[Sunny76]

I think I posted in this thread a few years ago.

Here goes:

August 5th/6th 1981 Daytime darkness storms.

I was only 5 at the time, but have vague memories of sitting in the living room with the lights on and the windows showing nothing but pitch black darkness outside. This was probably between 12-2pm, and I remember feeling quite scared during this event. I don’t remember seeing any daylight at all that day, so maybe fell asleep after the storms moved away, and woke up in the evening after dark. Like someone else said, cloud tops must have been 45-50,000 feet high to block out the sunlight.

August 21st/22nd 1987, violent thunderstorms over London and southern England. Constant thunder and lightning for several hours into the night. It was also a hot and humid day prior to the storms.

June 24th 1994 severe storms, on a Friday evening and into the night. The World Cup in the USA was taking place during this time. Brazil were playing Cameroon. Remember it well.

[Jamie M]

9 hours ago, Thunders said:

the one for me was 18-19th of June 2019, here we saw over 1000 lightning strikes per hour at one point. i remember walking to the window at about 9:30 and just seeing the lightning over the channel, almost constantly. the storm lasted well into the overnight hours till about 1-2am on 19th June. another much weaker storm rolled in about 5-7am. I remember watching in aw as i saw the whole towns power grid shut off one section at a time. I'm guessing I can call this one a supercell?

Could call it an MCS, watched the exact same storm as it neared here in North Kent. It was an incredibly large system although it exhibited no super-cellular features since I could spy the massive shelf cloud through the flashes of lightning.

The massive shelf cloud I'm on about here

 

Lightning from that storm 

[Eagle Eye]

Has to have been one of the ones in the 2017 season. If not, a Thursday in July 2019 because it happened with me and my friend at cricket and we tracked it coming in live with frequent anvil crawler lightning.

[Gleb Berloff]

Wednesday 18th May 2022. 

I love thunderstorms, and was disappointed. You see, Cambridge for some reason constantly avoids thunderstorms, which pass to the side all the time. Only very few hit directly. And almost all, even those which hit, are weak. 

There was one storm in 2021 which sounded vicious, as I was hearing thunder constantly from it as opposed to intermittently. But nothing comes close to the display a squall line put on the 18th May. 

It was at night when I checked the weather radar and saw a massive bow echo heading right at Cambridge. The worst of it, again, avoided Cambridge. But the thunder sounded legitimately terrifying from the storm, and lightning flared absolutely nonstop and so bright it turned night completely to day, it seems. Someone I know in Longstanton also spoke of how brightly the lightning flared. I can't imagine what it would have been like if the storm hit Cambridge. Even after it had moved off and the sky was clear above Cambridge, I was seeing nonstop flashes of heat lightning in the distance where the storm had gone off to. It stayed distant, so my photos of it aren't that good. 

Of course, that comes nowhere close to a thunderstorm I saw in Spain, which happened in August 2020. In 15 minutes, 5 palm trees had been smashed to pieces, our balcony became a swimming pool, a nearby eucalyptus grove had branches pouring out of it, the lawn in front of our house turned into a bog and there was flooding everywhere. 

[S Bragg]

Sunday 27th May 2018 is one that sticks out for me.  

 

Incredible lightning, near constant thunder, hail and even some localised flash flooding - I remember the road outside my house looking like a river with the amount of rainwater that was flowing along it.  It also went incredibly dark, almost like dusk.  In fact the street lights came on at one point.  

 

The Met Office had issued a yellow warning for storms that day, but just while we were in the absolute thick of the action it was upgraded to an amber warning.  "Bit late for that" was my first thought. 

[James1979]

On 09/05/2023 at 16:03, Gleb Berloff said:

Wednesday 18th May 2022. 

I love thunderstorms, and was disappointed. You see, Cambridge for some reason constantly avoids thunderstorms, which pass to the side all the time. Only very few hit directly. And almost all, even those which hit, are weak. 

There was one storm in 2021 which sounded vicious, as I was hearing thunder constantly from it as opposed to intermittently. But nothing comes close to the display a squall line put on the 18th May. 

It was at night when I checked the weather radar and saw a massive bow echo heading right at Cambridge. The worst of it, again, avoided Cambridge. But the thunder sounded legitimately terrifying from the storm, and lightning flared absolutely nonstop and so bright it turned night completely to day, it seems. Someone I know in Longstanton also spoke of how brightly the lightning flared. I can't imagine what it would have been like if the storm hit Cambridge. Even after it had moved off and the sky was clear above Cambridge, I was seeing nonstop flashes of heat lightning in the distance where the storm had gone off to. It stayed distant, so my photos of it aren't that good. 

Of course, that comes nowhere close to a thunderstorm I saw in Spain, which happened in August 2020. In 15 minutes, 5 palm trees had been smashed to pieces, our balcony became a swimming pool, a nearby eucalyptus grove had branches pouring out of it, the lawn in front of our house turned into a bog and there was flooding everywhere. 

Agreed, since moving to Cambridgeshire 6 years ago from Essex (where i used to think i was storm starved but nothing compared to here), I have to say I see storms mostly avoiding this area, yet I was under the impression that it was one of the stormiest parts of the country so it's been a big let down! Down the road in Bedford though, young Zak seems to get 30 storms a year with that long lens of his 

[SummerShower]

For here, 15/16 September 2016.

Constant CGs and torrential rain for 3 hours, with storms on and off for 5 to6 hours before that.  Shotgun thunder every few minutes, bead lightning observed too. Was just amazing.

In terms of hailstones though I'd like to give a mention to 9th May this year.  A decent homegrown effort, for a change which produced 20mm hailstones and apparently some cars in the local area were dented slightly.  The only bigger hailstones I saw were in June 1998.

 

[alexisj9]

Finally found a video of the storm in Kent in 2018 I've spoke about a few times, this is from Ashford though not Dover, but you get the idea. Lightning was like this through out, perhaps even more frequent where I was, in Dover, ayecliff watched it approach from the sea.

Kent Thunderstorm 26/05/2018 - Buy, Sell or Upload Video Content with Newsflare

WWW.NEWSFLARE.COM

---

Kent Storm Chasers are a small group of severe weather enthusiasts made up of friends and family members. We monitor local...

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by alexisj9

[Supacell]

19 minutes ago, SummerShower said:

For here, 15/16 September 2016.

Constant CGs and torrential rain for 3 hours, with storms on and off for 5 to6 hours before that.  Shotgun thunder every few minutes, bead lightning observed too. Was just amazing.

In terms of hailstones though I'd like to give a mention to 9th May this year.  A decent homegrown effort, for a change which produced 20mm hailstones and apparently some cars in the local area were dented slightly.  The only bigger hailstones I saw were in June 1998.

 

Agree that this was a great storm. I was out all night between Winchester and Basingstoke watching and chasing it. 

[Emz by the Thames]

My birthday is July the 18th and I'm pretty lucky in that there have been some cracking storms in the UK on my birthday over the years.

I grew up in Jeddah and although it doesn't rain much - when it storms...it storms, strobe lightning, flash floods, the lot. People just used to watch the storm clouds build in the distance  in anticipation of what will happen next, like it was a social event. We had a corker one day - never known a storm like it.  Exciting for the first hour for a 7 year old that's not seen rain for a year, then pretty frightening  when it won't stop, or move on after a while like storms seem to do here. We lived in pre-fabs and part of the roof caved in an the whole place flooded, generator failed. We lived near a storm drain but things have got worse for Jeddah as these powerful storms and been fatal in recent years, mostly due to flash floods.

[alexisj9]

1 hour ago, alexisj9 said:

Finally found a video of the storm in Kent in 2018 I've spoke about a few times, this is from Ashford though not Dover, but you get the idea. Lightning was like this through out, perhaps even more frequent where I was, in Dover, ayecliff watched it approach from the sea.

Kent Thunderstorm 26/05/2018 - Buy, Sell or Upload Video Content with Newsflare

WWW.NEWSFLARE.COM

---

Kent Storm Chasers are a small group of severe weather enthusiasts made up of friends and family members. We monitor local...

 

Actually I think this is the one that missed Dover but hit most of the UK, about 20.000 lightning strikes, and the one I'm on about also made the news, but only hit the se about a week later. It was an MCs that started in the channel and made land fall in Sussex/Kent at about 2am in the morning. I don't think I'll ever find footage of it.

Edited May 24, 2023 by alexisj9

[summer blizzard]

The best storm i encoutered was i believe 8th August 2014. It lasted for maybe an hour with very strong winds and hail, thunder and lightening however the scariest thing about it was that it pre-tornadic. Above my house perhaps a few meters across the center crossed and i could see the spin and more scarily, several vertical updrafts. 

[Weather-history]

On 31/05/2020 at 08:25, MikeUpjohn said:

Keen to know about this Manchester supercell you mentioned if you have any info!

Clips of this was featured in a weather documentary.

[B87]

I remember there being a fairly decent storm in either July 2000 or 2002, in otherwise cool and dull months.

Specific dates I remember. 3-10 August 1997. It almost felt tropical with high 20s and low 30s, with a storm coming every day at around 4-5pm.

18th July 2014 - has been mentioned by a few others

23rd June 2016 - absolute monster storm system in the evening and overnight with constant lightning for hours and hours. Timed to perfection with the country deciding to shoot itself in both feet. I remember going to vote earlier that day and it feeling very warm and muggy, even though it was only 21c (the dewpoint was also 21c at the time).

27th May 2018 - after a hot day, huge supercell style storm came in from the west. Great cloud structure and non stop lightning.

[Rufus Butterfield]

In recent times I’d probably say 31st July 2020 was a decent one, especially during the daytime. Came after a very hot and humid day. Lots of cg lightning I recall and some very strong wind gusts. Another contender was definitely 24th July 2019 during early hours.

But I do remember a while ago, (must’ve of been around 2014) in October, there was a strong storm while we were on a family walk, but still in the Doncaster area. Blackest sky I’ve ever seen and lots of lightning. We had to sprint back to the car as the rain was torrential. I was quite young so this might’ve been exaggerated from memory, but I know it definitely happened.

[80sWeather]

On 29/05/2020 at 01:44, James1979 said:

This has probably been done many a time on here before but being a massive fan of thunderstorms (and very starved again of late and indeed the last decade overall), I'd be interested to know, what is your favourite/best storm you've ever seen in the UK?  

As a child of the 80's I tend to think of that era and the early 90's as very thundery - it was quite normal back in Essex to have regular storms in summer (especially overnight), and on 24th June 1994 I saw the very best storm I have ever witnessed - if someone had said you'll never see anything like it again I would have been shocked (excuse pun!) but all these years later I still relive that storm in my mind and pray that I'll see something like it again as nothing comes close. 

I recall sitting in the garden after school, enjoying the sunshine and warmth (27c per my old records at the time) and it started clouding over - it reminded me of an approaching warm front at the time but clearly that was the anvil spreading across way in advance of the storm.  Before I knew it, in the distance all I could see was continuous bolts and forks of lightning across the horizon - even then I was passionate about storms and lightning but this was something different to anything I'd seen before and my heart started racing and I felt quite fearful!  As the storm drew nearer, the background was filled with the sound of continuous rumbling, growling and booming which grew louder and louder, whilst all the time the sky grew darker, punctuated every second or 2 with bright flashes.  Then within no time it was so dark the street lights came on and the clouds were glowing bright green - I now know that is often a sign of hail but we had no hail, what we did have was so much CG lightning every second or 2 and thunder that never had an end, just a constant booming all around and explosions when the lightning hit close by.  Every window I ran to front and back of the house had bolts tearing down in front of me - I was so excited but so terrified and I recall hearing my heart beat so loud in my ears it was crazy!  We then had a good 30 mins of just the most intense lightning I've ever seen before it gradually subsided.  I've had very close strikes since which were terrifying but that storm was so consistently raining down lighting in close proximity and so frequent that it has to be the best I've seen in the UK. Oh for something similar again sometime soon!!

Hi James the June 94 storm probably one of the best I’ve witnessed too.

https://youtu.be/5T3NaLp_AC4

It got dark much earlier than normal that evening!

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by 80sWeather

[Thunders]

On 16/04/2023 at 22:47, Jamie M said:

Could call it an MCS, watched the exact same storm as it neared here in North Kent. It was an incredibly large system although it exhibited no super-cellular features since I could spy the massive shelf cloud through the flashes of lightning.

The massive shelf cloud I'm on about here

 

Lightning from that storm 

thanks, I'm only 14 so I didn't get to experience the storms of the early 2000s and 1980s-1990s

[philglossop]

Easy.

Monday 10th July 1995

Storm come up from the south and hit plymouth about 11pm and rumbled on literally all night. If you look on YouTube I think south Devon had flooding but its a night ill never forget and walking around plymouth city centre the next day people were like zombies as it went on till at least 5am.

 

 

[Weather-history]

On 16/04/2023 at 21:59, MP-R said:

There are already some great descriptions in this thread of events that also affected here but here are a list of dates:

17th May 1997

- one of my earliest clear memories of a thunderstorm in the UK. I was in central Bristol at the time it happened… it went exceedingly dark and the fall of large hail was impressive, as much as the T&L.

 

That was a beauty. Reached my area during the early hours of the Sunday when thunder sounding like a cannon going off woke me up. I thought it was a rogue thunder shower because there were only a couple of more widely separated rumbles of thunder. As I started to nod off, the thunder got more frequent and I looked out the window to be treated to a spectacular lightning display to my west. The storm moved away just as the dawn light started to drown out the lightning flashes. 

 

From a Bristol paper

 

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Weather-history

[MP-R]

26 minutes ago, Weather-history said:

That was a beauty. Reached my area during the early hours of the Sunday when thunder sounding like a cannon going off woke me up. I thought it was a rogue thunder shower because there were only a couple of more widely separated rumbles of thunder. As I started to nod off, the thunder got more frequent and I looked out the window to be treated to a spectacular lightning display to my west. The storm moved away just as the dawn light started to drown out the lightning flashes. 

 

 

From a Bristol paper

 

 

Very interesting and great to read! Don’t seem to get the extremes like that any more.

[Hoopyfrood]

On 29/05/2020 at 01:44, James1979 said:

This has probably been done many a time on here before but being a massive fan of thunderstorms (and very starved again of late and indeed the last decade overall), I'd be interested to know, what is your favourite/best storm you've ever seen in the UK?  

As a child of the 80's I tend to think of that era and the early 90's as very thundery - it was quite normal back in Essex to have regular storms in summer (especially overnight), and on 24th June 1994 I saw the very best storm I have ever witnessed - if someone had said you'll never see anything like it again I would have been shocked (excuse pun!) but all these years later I still relive that storm in my mind and pray that I'll see something like it again as nothing comes close. 

I recall sitting in the garden after school, enjoying the sunshine and warmth (27c per my old records at the time) and it started clouding over - it reminded me of an approaching warm front at the time but clearly that was the anvil spreading across way in advance of the storm.  Before I knew it, in the distance all I could see was continuous bolts and forks of lightning across the horizon - even then I was passionate about storms and lightning but this was something different to anything I'd seen before and my heart started racing and I felt quite fearful!  As the storm drew nearer, the background was filled with the sound of continuous rumbling, growling and booming which grew louder and louder, whilst all the time the sky grew darker, punctuated every second or 2 with bright flashes.  Then within no time it was so dark the street lights came on and the clouds were glowing bright green - I now know that is often a sign of hail but we had no hail, what we did have was so much CG lightning every second or 2 and thunder that never had an end, just a constant booming all around and explosions when the lightning hit close by.  Every window I ran to front and back of the house had bolts tearing down in front of me - I was so excited but so terrified and I recall hearing my heart beat so loud in my ears it was crazy!  We then had a good 30 mins of just the most intense lightning I've ever seen before it gradually subsided.  I've had very close strikes since which were terrifying but that storm was so consistently raining down lighting in close proximity and so frequent that it has to be the best I've seen in the UK. Oh for something similar again sometime soon!!

I remember that storm well - it was the day we moved into our first flat.  I remember the sky going a green colour before the storm too - it was certainly one of the most spectacular I've seen - especially as we were driving through the Essex countryside in the middle of it.   Another spectacular storm I remember from my childhood in Essex was the "Dunmow Hailstorm" of 26th May 1985.  Started with ~2cm hail, which increased in size over several tranches up to about tennis-ball size. Recorded in the TORRO database here: https://www.torro.org.uk/research/hail/events

[James1979]

On 09/07/2023 at 08:30, 80sWeather said:

Hi James the June 94 storm probably one of the best I’ve witnessed too.

https://youtu.be/5T3NaLp_AC4

It got dark much earlier than normal that evening!

 

Thanks matey, I have seen that before as I think I've googled the 94 storm to death to be fair!! Not seen anything like it since so often revisit both in memory and online. Bit sad yes.