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Witnessed my first thunderstorm of the year yesterday, as one exploded over Cheltenham, after chasing the storm over Worcester earlier and losing hope after it died off. Great start!

A horrible night for the people of Barnsdall and Bartlesville OK. There are a couple of videos taken from the Hampton Inn, Bartlesville. Tornado sirens wailing at the beginning, then power flashes and the siren stops as the big tornado moves into town. Video below (strong language as you might expect!). There were a few weaker tornadoes elsewhere but it feels like things could have been a lot worse given the environment and what the models and Storm Prediction Center were forecasting.

Runs this AM do seem to be dropping a trough to our SW for next. Will turn more unsettled relative to this week, but could also be warm and thundery with sunny spells at times too.

Oh no.

From past 24 hours #BankHolidayMonday 21.2C the max in Derbyshire yesterday

danm I think some CET records could be under threat if this warmth persists. Check out my post in the CET thread but the 06z GFS is similar to the 00z EC control, which has a CET of 14.9C up to the 16th. This is all clearly a fine line because if the low ends up sat over us it will be a very different story but the sinking of the low southwards keeps warm air entrenched. Also just a side note but EC00z ensemble member 10 is the most extreme I have seen for the UK. It constantly has the warm air to the south feeding in for the entire later stages of the run, elevating maxima to the high 20s widely with minima in the high teens. After the 16th there are consistently daily CET returns in the low to mid 20s. Won't come off but I had to point it out because it was extraordinary.

EC looks warm and thundery this morning ,esp day 9/10..

What a gorgeous week coming up. I would honestly be happy with this all summer. Pleasantly warm by day and fresh by night.

Beautiful blue out there today. Love it. This is what we've needed more of for months. Properly sunny mornings with good light levels, such a nice change from the near-constant clag and dull grey gloom.

carinthian Hi Carinthian. high P coming into play, book your flight. yes, a disappointment for the Silkmen yesterday.

Rush2019 Defo under a cloud yesterday with Macc losing the play off, Crewe losing first leg and of course Man United humiliated by the Eagles . Things can only get better ( weather wise ) starting to look promising as the week progresses. Should I book that flight to visit blighty ? C

Morning. Clear at low levels today but foggy a bit higher up. 12°C 7.14am, grey and dry. Risk of a shower but temps could reach 19°C again. Macc max yesterday 17.1°C not bad considering was under cloud all day.

Reed....

It's a Philcast Could see it developing to my south west from here, but too much lower cloud to get a good view of the structure and eventually drifted off further to Evesham. YouCut_20240506_213403160~2.mp4

21c in Exeter, highest temperature so far this spring, now this is more like spring enjoy the weather everyone, totally deserved

Yes does look warmth will continue although more unsettled but get some sunny spells and temps still low twenties in spots with the risk of thunderstorms quite a good outlook tbh especially if you like warmth and storms

First 20°C of the year! Doing some paving and a fence, so it's nice to get a sweat on - a detox.

Lovely jubbly.

Tornado probs keep increasing on mesoanalysis, low level jet also beginning to ramp up. Reed close to a big tornado

Weather Enthusiast91 Same! One of the best early May BH weekends I can remember in years, best since 2018 without a doubt. We are entering the first sustained spell of truly warm and dry weather for this whole spring. Today and Saturday both topped 19c here and were mostly clear which took some getting used to! Yesterday was forgettable, showers in the morning and cooler sunny spells in the afternoon but nothing as bad as most of March/April. Reached 19.8c here today, was a glorious afternoon in the sun. Could see some ominous dark grey clouds just to our north but they passed us by luckily. For the first time this year I was outside and couldn't really feel a chill in the air and it made me so happy. Summer is finally on the way!!

markyo We’re so different, there’s no ‘stench’ in spring or summer for me, I love the smell of the air in these seasons. There’s definitely a smell of decay in autumn, but I enjoy the bonfire scent. Having covid 4 times has really messed up my sense of smell, though. Mainly cloudy here today with more interesting cloudscapes but my area dodged the thunderstorms. Felt pleasantly warm (19°C) despite the cloud.

It feels like I am living on a different planet to most members in here. It has been warm, dry and sunny over the weekend including the bank holiday. Hopefully everyone will get some nice weather during the upcoming week. We all deserve it.

No rain, no thunder and no goals from Crewe Alexandra. Woe is me! Seriously, it looked quite stormy from where I was sitting high up in the Main Stand but the rain stayed away and we had a quite chilly wind instead, reminding us that although the evenings are a lot lighter and longer now, it is still not yet summer.

Around 10 to 15 minutes ago looking South from Eastern Solihull. Storm shield held quite strong here today (though considering there was a May Day walk earlier that had went to, wasn’t too fussed much as I would love to see a thunderstorm). Looks like a few of you got hit badly with slow moving showers and big loud bangs ️

Some interesting trends to pull out of the GFS 12z temperature ensembles this evening. Firstly, a lot of disagreement on the timing of the end of the warm influence and a return to something closer to average. The mean starts to reduce around the beginning of next week on the 13th, but there are some runs that extend the warmth well beyond that to as far as the 15th, and in fact go well above 10C at 850hPa. After that, a lot of scatter with likely options close to average but again plenty of very warm options available. In terms of temperature forecasts, I still continue to think UKV is the best model for shorter term - it has the better resolution and is meant to be more accurate over the UK, and I usually think it does its job better than the others. Here is today's afternoon forecast from the UKV 03z this morning, followed by ECM 00z and GFS 06z attempts next to it: And here is verification from Meteociel: It's pretty clear from that I think that UKV performed best - ECM was far too low with temperatures in the SW, GFS was too low with the absolute max, and UKV was probably the closest to getting it all right. So, with that in mind, we can now reach Saturday with the UKV 15z, so here are the afternoon temperatures for every day up to and including Saturday: So, overall consensus has Friday and Saturday as the warmest days, with a gradual build of heat through the week. 23C the highest max on those charts, but a very widespread 20C or higher towards the end of the week. The idea that we'd have 850s in the 5-10C range and temperatures limited to high teens in most places never seemed credible to me as others had also pointed out, and UKV dispenses with that idea tonight. Again UKV did under-read by 1C, so I do wonder whether somewhere will get to a sneaky 24C. The 850hPa temperatures for the week also illustrate this quite well - just gently warming up throughout the week. Here are 850s for tomorrow afternoon, compared to Saturday afternoon. Tomorrow warmth focused on southern and western regions, Wednesday central and eastern excluding far N England and Scotland. Thursday sees more of a N to S split with the dividing line near the Humber. Friday warm for almost all of England and Wales, and Saturday includes Scotland as well. Of course exact details are always subject to last minute change and can even become a nowcast situation, but in terms of the overall maxes if not the exact placement, I think we can be pretty confident that most areas will be seeing low 20s towards the end of the week, and mid 20s definitely can't be ruled out in a few favoured spots. Summary In the short term, lots of dry and increasingly warm weather around. Uncertainty around the duration, but looks to last with some certainty to the end of the week, and possibly even beyond that. After that a bit of a cool down is likely, but warm runs are popping up again beyond that. Everything in these charts is indicative of a warm week to come, and likely a very warm first half of May overall for many areas.

CET returns from the 00z EC this morning. A very warm near term outlook with the high returns from the 7th to 12th not that far removed from the ensemble average. The 13th to 17th are cooler then the ensemble mean so scope for some high values here. I think mid to high 13s looks likely up to the 15th but anything could happen after the 12th really. EC brings back some Atlantic influence after this date. GFS 06z brings cooler air from the NE while the UKMO at T168 looks really warm. Interesting that both the GFS and UKMO are showing pressure rises over Scandi, it could very easily prolong the warmth that is currently expected to shift on the 12th.

We missed a great opportunity in 2008 to beat 1833 and certainly to record a 14C+ May. Seems like there may be another opportunity this year- especially if the latest GFS run is anything to go by.

ChannelThunder there is a suspicious absence of jet fuel trails today

Just sneaked into Garden to do a little work (from home). It's amazing the energy you can feel, the birds going crazy getting food, the plants bursting and the sun shining down. Looking ahead next week doesn't look too bad, pressure is lower but not very low, so should be pleasant with the odd shower for most, but staying warm for time of year, a typical May week perhaps.

northwestsnow I think judah Cohen hinted on X that we could have a ridge situation to the east with encroaching troughs at times from what he posted and indicated.

The GFS 0Z seems to be looking OK on Monday of next week Would probably get some thundery activity out of that

The sun finally got the memo and dragged it's backside out and is now shining in all it's glory.

The clearest I've seen in what feels like an eternity. Better make the most of it before convective infill comes and takes it away!

Quite London-esque here too this morning, albeit with the sunshine a little more hazier. But there really is that proper Spring/very early Summer feel to things now. And great strength to the sun. While Summer, as you might expect, likely to have some ups and downs, I hope Autumn goes for its super long snooze now until October.

A mile wide Tornado causing significant damage in barnsdall, Oklahoma, SPC issued a tornado emergency. Could be heading towards other towns such as bartlesville as its a long tracked monster. Damage from correlation shows debris getting flung miles away so definitely a higher class tornado. Also unfortunately (at the time of writing this), information from the police in the affected towns say there are already 2 fatalities, several people trapped, and building being flattened. Im sure we will hear more as we go through the rest of the day.

Latest HRRR, OKC metro still needs to watch this event very closely. Also notice the cell down by the red river completely by itself.

Tornado on the ground

A bit of a wall cloud from one of the chasers on severe studio's in Oklahoma.

Interesting watching the weather channel on the news from florida, they have constant coverage of the storm potential tonight , they're saying the tornados could go on into the night, scary stuff, I wish we had storm coverage in the UK like they do here.

WYorksWeather think we need an upwelling kelvin wave to get the weather a bit more neutral, there's still to me very much a niño imprint somewhere down the line. The sooner we have that taking place with the east to west QBO changeover the better for our weather moving forward. I did see a very interesting video made by @Gavin P on YouTube which I would suggest everyone watches, it is superb, actually i think he has been on form with forecasting including giving very good model analysis and no bias at all.

Showing how things can change even at relatively short range - GFS 18z fractionally stronger with the high at day 5. Interesting to see what happens further down the line...

Disgustingly wet and grey here in London. As for this week, I'll believe it when I see it. We in the SE seem to be always getting the worst of the clag, so I expect we'll get some more in the next few days. Last spring/early summer was the same: forecast (especially Meto) said sunny and warm, but the clag would not dissipate before sunset.

Pretty happy with my forecast/boundary positioning for today

Quite an impressive swirl. Play it on the radar and it looks like a catherine wheel.

A Face like Thunder don't worry I'm sure we'll soon be in the furnace if the last few years are anything to go by with temps well into the thirties.

LetItSnow! Probably still far too early to do more than speculate about second half I think. Hopefully the broad-scale pattern at the seasonal level will reconfigure to something like the opposite of our current 10 month pattern, e.g. a move from troughs and occasional ridges to ridges and occasional troughs. We're not going to go months and months without any unsettled weather at all, but it would be nice if for once we could have this week mainly settled and warm, a few unsettled days, and then another settled and warm week to follow on.

CryoraptorA303 Definitely, the incessant rain we've been plagued by since September has been tiresome. Would've been great if all that rain fell as snow during winter.

Dreadful BH monday here in London improving from tomorrow sadly this weather will not last good agreement for Atlantic westerlies to return next week, second half of May looking iffy at this stage. Notice the -NAO is creeping in more I think the SSW is still having an influence.

Absolutely cracking day today. Loads of gardening jobs done in lovely sunshine. Completely Jacobs’d now. Meto has another yellow warning out for thunderstorms, but so far a beautiful evening.

Fascinating structure