Storms and Convective discussion - 1st May 2022 onwards

[Arnie Pie]

6 minutes ago, Flash bang flash bang etc said:

Or nothing could happen in the next 6 lol

My half pint glass is always full

[Hirudine]

There does seem to be more intense clumps evolving out of the rain mass, particularly on the eastern side.

[Rush2019]

Yes, there was  rogue strike on Blitzy, at Welwyn, just south of the tasty cell at Stevenage.

[The Tall Weatherman]

Hopefully it turns electrical with these back builders?

[Mesoscale]

Torrential rain here, there is going to be a lot of flooding around here but no lightning, what is stopping these producing lightning?

[Zak M]

Absolutely lashing it down here

[sunnijim]

6 hours ago, Azuremoon2 said:

Well, that's that. Nothing at all like the widespread storms forecasted, mainly confined to the lower risk area in the south west. Maybe next time eh.

Not sure that is entirely correct.

Areas from the East Kent Coast to the West Sussex coast had a ( imo 5/10) set of cells between 8pm and 10pm last night.

I would have given 4/10 but it gets an extra mark that was for the quick fire intensification out of nowhere.!

Vivid sheet lightning and a few C.C crawlers lasting 40 minutes here before dying out again.

Nice grumbling thunder,nothing overhead.

Point taken that areas in the lower risk around Bournmouth Copt for the better storms in terms of intensity though.

Edited June 5, 2022 by sunnijim

[Mesoscale]

I am surprised that Meto hasn't upgraded the North West M25/M1 area to an Amber warning for flooding. The rain has been torrential for the past hour and a half, last time we had this much persistent heavy rain a landslide caused severe delays and cancellations out of Watford Junction. 

[Harry]

7 hours ago, Ben Sainsbury said:

Been very busy tonight but just checked the radar & wtf is going on! All the action is away from the SE haha

Can you bring back a disapprove button

Glad I went to sleep - my gut feeling was right on this occasion. Pleased some got some crackers and it wasn’t a total right off

[Guest]

Well I have to say we’ve been extremely lucky in the last three weeks. Three evenings of storms each with lightning displays we sometimes go can go a couple of years without seeing. 
 

Last night was a solid, 7-7.5 out of 10 for the UK and I go into my holiday in a couple of weeks in the Dominican Republic without the need to be desperate to see storms there which is a huge bonus. 

[Jason H]

8 minutes ago, Alderc said:

Well I have to say we’ve been extremely lucky in the last three weeks. Three evenings of storms each with lightning displays we sometimes go can go a couple of years without seeing. 
 

Last night was a solid, 7-7.5 out of 10 for the UK and I go into my holiday in a couple of weeks in the Dominican Republic without the need to be desperate to see storms there which is a huge bonus. 

Worst ever I'm going on holiday post. Enjoy. 

[Norfolk Sheep]

As expected only moderate rain here in the early hours, however some of our judges are coming from areas where the rain has been torrential, so hoping they can get to Norfolk before 9.30!

[claret047]

Here in mid Essex a total disappointment. Just light to moderate rain overnight. Hopefully we will see something this evening.

[sunnijim]

8 hours ago, Ben Sainsbury said:

Been very busy tonight but just checked the radar & wtf is going on! All the action is away from the SE haha

Think you needed to look at the radar returns between 2030 and 2130.

Some of the SE coasts were treated to a reasonable set of storm cells.

The model guidance on this event seemed to be closer to the mark earlier in the week with the 'trigger' for rapid development near the South Coast.

Runs on Saturday ( ukv in mind) seemed to show the intensification over inland SE from 1am on Sundsy morning with London being in a sweet spot.

The reality was the inland parts of SE England saw the rapid decay of the coastal cells as they tracked North.

So time wise and area wise models never had a grip at close range and quite likely in house M.O models in the same boat,wording of their warming suggested storms developing OVER Southern counties.

In the past they are quite specific if they see it as an 'import' job.

It had to be said the N.W storm experts here were very clear on the different scenarios and the difficulty in nailing areas and timeframes on this event.

The interesting case for me is how areas West of the IOW reaped the best rewards storm wise,not sure they were ever in the higher risk zone?

[ChannelThunder]

A very disappointing night here, with everything just to the west and shrouded in low cloud. I bumped into the island's best lightning photographer and we both set up cameras pointing into the channel as cells developed out there, but they died off in no time as the energy had clearly been eaten up by the Bournemouth cells ahead of it. There was a lot of flashing from those storms, but ultimately the amount of low cloud between us and the cells meant nothing great could be seen.

Still, you win some and you lose some. After getting so lucky twice in May, I cannot complain. So far, this plume season has hit a solid and rare 9/10.

Feel bad for Dan, whose MDT for the SE was again written off by the SB French afternoon storms sucking up the energy. Like he said in here last night, the outlooks are far easier for him to do when there's a strong cap over there!

[NO LONGER POSTING]

Pretty big bust if ask me considering what was forecast by models.. what got me was seeing those cells out west inland exploded with little or no lightning..the trigger was there we just didn't have all the ingredients.. a quick check of the lightning archive also shows how void most of the risk areas were of lightning..

Did get a very intense heavy shower around 4am but that was it

You win some loose some!

[Row w]

Was hoping to wake up to a boomer of one but just a few beefy showers passing through before this deluge of rain ahh well there's always next time and even though there wasn't any lightning action up here to my knowledge its been a brill hour with a cup of coffee reading and viewing all the great footage from the S/SW sounds like it was rather electrifying down there 

[Eagle Eye]

A load of lightning stills, got loads on my camera that were much better and I'll hopefully upload them with many more images that I've taken off my camera recently.

[Turquoise]

2 hours ago, sunnijim said:

Not sure that is entirely correct.

Areas from the East Kent Coast to the West Sussex coast had a ( imo 5/10) set of cells between 8pm and 10pm last night.

I would have given 4/10 but it gets an extra mark that was for the quick fire intensification out of nowhere.!

Vivid sheet lightning and a few C.C crawlers lasting 40 minutes here before dying out again.

Nice grumbling thunder,nothing overhead.

Point taken that areas in the lower risk around Bournmouth Copt for the better storms in terms of intensity though.

Yes hence the term 'mainly' in the south west, I'm aware other areas in the south had storms to a lesser extent

[Guest]

Get a bit of sun this afternoon and we could go again? 
 

http://www.convectiveweather.co.uk/forecast.php?date=2022-06-05

Edited June 5, 2022 by Alderc

[Eagle Eye]

In my village there was a light show on the church for the platinum jubilee at the same time as the lightning, regretting not going down there now (photo taken by Olivia Whittaker)

[camturbo]

3 minutes ago, Alderc said:

Get a bit of sun this afternoon and we could go again? 
 

http://www.convectiveweather.co.uk/forecast.php?date=2022-06-05

Let's hope so eh!! Did quite well last night and it happened fairly quickly. Just goes to show we can never give up the hope.

[staplehurst]

It does appear the French surface-based storms were (at least partly) to blame for the limited amount of thunderstorms in SE England last night. Obviously some did develop in the residual instability ahead of the French outflow over Kent/East Sussex, but this likely used up the remaining CAPE before being replaced by the area of "no CAPE". Whereas Dorset was less-impacted by the earlier French convection and had a much more plentiful supply of unstable air to tap into and so was able to maintain much more active thunderstorms for longer.

Always fun to see the massive differences in CAPE being simulated by models once they've realised a lot of it has been depleted by earlier thunderstorms - compare the ARPEGE 00z run last night with the previous 12z run from yesterday afternoon for the same timestamp. And if nothing else this serves to highlight how poorly models handled yesterday's convection (which was not a surprise as the risk was always there with a weak cap in France).

[sheikhy]

Dead last night!!just heavy rain lol!!got a nice 8 hour sleep instead!!storm the other week was really good!!

[NO LONGER POSTING]

The shower this morning gave 16mm of rain in 10 minutes at 4am this morning that is quite impressive although no lightning