Leaderboard

I have a piece of a tree that was just struck about 10 mins ago. There’s a small fire and the Fb are just turning up

Getting closer..

Astonishing rebound in momentum transport that is behind the current spectacular synoptics and associated high impact weather. Both the heat, and also the powder keg potential for thunderstorms. The GWO has smashed its way through the El Nino attractor phases through into a weak amplitude Phase 5, based on the two day two consolidated lag. A reversal of the standing wave pattern between June and July and a resounding blueprint for the anomalous European and Scandinavian ridging presently in evidence. With that switch in mind, NWP has been suggesting, up to now, a wholesale collapse and reversal back of the present regime during next week. Times like this, ahead of a suggested vigorous pattern change, (or more accurately switch back to a previous pattern) require extra caution because while the atmosphere ""remembers" its previous behaviours, there is no linear one size fits all response from one season to another. Therefore expecting the same responses from the forcing within the tropics and extra tropics, season on season, is over simplistic and erroneous. Especially the size of the correction these models appear to have been predicting. Personally, with all the above waffle in mind, I am watching the disruption of the upper trough next week and how that phases with the residual heat lows from the stagnant heat dome mass that will have sat there for an extraordinary amount of time by the end of the coming weekend. No surprise at all that the Met Office have issued so many thunderstorm warnings day on day and no surprise at all if these calculations of how the Atlantic troughing phases with this stagnant slack low pressure mass runs into some difficulties. There have already been some incremental corrections westward with this process and there is time up to 7/8 days ahead for more of these All in all, a lot to be decided and not take for granted, from my own point of view at least, whatever the present modelling may presently suggest, from the early - but more especially mid to latter part of next week. Edit 6pm This was written earlier this afternoon until home commitments took over. Irrespective of the details (which are irrelevant in the circumstances at this distance in terms of what each model goes on show thereafter), the trend indeed continues further on latest 12z suite, so far, to take the main trough ever west of the UK in the middle of next week. This is one such example of not taking each and every NWP operational and indeed ensemble data at face value but treat them as a snapshot in time and watch instead how they trend over a day or preferably two at a time Should probably pin this as a rider to every post...signals lead models, models do not lead signals.

HOLY POOP!!! Just looked outside and there's a FREEKING MOTHERSHIP COMING AT ME!!!!!!!!!

We’ve got a cracking storm going on around here, and has been since 17:00 this evening.

A weather watcher picture taken by Tim WJ yesterday evening from Buckland, Buckinghamshire. https://www.bbc.co.uk/weatherwatchers/report/ee105f17-9adc-42d7-8b5c-16e3a9a0416a/

simulated IR this afternoon

Unbelievable storm in Fife last night, constant thunder and lightning with hail and rain like I have never seen before. Flooding was a major problem and I got stuck for a few hours due to impassable roads.

Well, what an amazing night that was. Started off on the hills between Chesterfield & Matlock watching distant flashes and anvil crawlers over the Stoke area. After some debate I decided to head further West and bloody hell am I glad I did. Drove up through the Peaks to my apparent new second home, the Cat & Fiddle pub, basically on top of a mountain at over 500m above sea level. Could still see constant flashes on route, and when I arrived a band of hardy storm chasers were already there, including a fellow Netweather user, a radar extra sub at least, not sure if he's in the forum's or not! Sat there for a good half hour with the strobe effect lightning and constant droning thunder edging closer, no wind at all and occasionally a closer flash would eminate a deep booming rumble, behind us was the most crazy blood red half moon, it was almost other-worldly. Then the fog and eventually rain rolled in, the lightning was constant and I mean constant, as in a flash every second at this point, and I decided to bail east towards Buxton as a large storm was now moving NE access the Peak Distict. I managed to stay ahead of the intense precip all the way along the A6 from Buxton to Chatsworth before it finally overtook me with biblical strength, visibility down to zero and leaves and debris all over the road. All the time I was driving there was a constant light show to the South with massive flashes and anvil crawlers, at some points the flashes were so bright I was actually blinded for a second or two. Eventually pulled over again just on the edge of Chesterfield and watched the storm roll North and die off, but not before it dropped several CGs and some stunning IC bolts as a parting gift. An absolutely incredible night and the only thing I can compare it to that I've personally witnessed is way back in June 2005. I never thought I would see night time lightning of that frequency up here, honestly thought that it was resigned to what you guys on the South coast normally see, but that was truly epic. Small clip below as the storm was basically overhead near Chesterfield, lightning not the most frequent at this point but I was so caught up in the moment I decided to jump out into the wind and rain and film Reed Timmer style (minus the yelling). Apologies if it's rotated the wrong way! VID_20200812_013706.mp4

Yes @Ross B, but only just, what a night As others have said, a very unbelievable storm. I have never witnessed anything like it. Constant lightning and booming thunder . The rain and sometimes hail was unreal. I got stuck in the village I was at for a few hours as the road at each end of the place was flooded and impassable. The storm was directly above me so I didn’t manage to capture much of the lightning for a decent photograph. I recorded some video footage also which I will have to go through when I have the time. I couldn’t believe how heavy the rain was, the streets were like rivers with lots of debris across the roads. After about 2 hours me and some other cars managed to get through the flooded road. I hope there is not much damage to people’s property this morning. It was a very fun exciting evening with all the thunder and lightning but I most admit I was pretty scared when I seen the flooding.

15 to 20 flashes per minute currently off Hastings coast. These right now. Mostly IC but few CG. Odd rumbles. Still few miles off land will prob die out before making landfall and maybe reigniting inland.

I don't understand why there is so much animosity in the group today. We are forecasters.. enthusiasts .. chasers For me the power of the weather is absolutely thrilling, even though deadly,. whether it's the intense heat,. the droughts.. to the cold ,. to the vast snowy scenes and everything in between,. it's thrilling to see and experience the extremes,. Unfortunately, there is always the risk of severe consequences,. both to us and those people around us. I travelled to Zambia during the rain season,. there were thunderstorms almost every night ,. -- I travelled to the DRC border one day,. and there was a huge deluge of rain that flooded the road I was travelling on, ., it was an adventure for me going from A to B.. seeing the rain fall ,. watching people jump as lightning struck metres away,. jumping between points to avoid getting soaked in newly formed streams of water.. but not once did I want anyone to get hurt.. to lose money.. to lose their home because of it. I have seen members of this group post warnings to other social media platforms to let them know the dangers of any on coming weather.. and to the little things.. is it safe to put the washing out.. have a BBQ For the most part , this weather chat has been amazing.. even the complaints when certain cones are filled with melted icecream.

Some of the lightning i caught last night .

Impressive shelf cloud forming from this.

Beautiful skies from the Steyning, W Sussex area looking north. These came up pretty damn quick.

Not great quality but some flashes over Watford in the last half hour.

Daughter caught these from the channel storm

Photo doesn’t do it justice, but this is the current view to my SSW:

Please stop the self righteous posts lambasting others having a moan. It's fine to have a little moaning in here as long as an argument doesn't break out. The arguments popping up now are by those who are complaining about other members. If you feel that a post doesn't belong in here, use the report button and let a moderator deal with it. No more on the matter now, please? As you were..

Couple of pics of the Cell developing North of Wigan

Major flash flood from that south Cumbria storm. Trying to head home now stuck waiting for this to go down! Will have to abandon the van and go on foot as farmer says there is 12 ft of wall in the road where the beck has burst though. Hate to think what it's like further north as I was only on the edge of this. MOV_0461_854x480.mp4

I can see rotation, mad storm. Snowdonia

Just got in after an hour and half watching lightning storms ramp up with crazy anvil crawler and spider lightning, before then dashing back home to close the windows and have all this roll over head in Macclesfield. Storm was elevated to a degree, with only I-C, C-C and A-C lightning. But all of a sudden over head it started firing out smooth and incredibly bright C-G lightning, that sounded like the earth was splitting. Still going on now, and the first lightning could be seen about 9.30pm, so coming up on 4 hours of thunderstorms. Pictures and video to follow but one of the C-G bolts below, if sadly, a little out of focus.

What an incredible lights show even though I wasn't that close! Can't remember the last time I saw something like that

London cell

A very impressive sounding from Herstmonceux at 11z. Unmodified it would convect freely with air parcels rising from the surface, but it requires a trigger - ideally low-level convergence (or some forcing aloft but that isn't likely until the evening). But essentially the cap is ready to go over southern England where low-level convergence develops/strengthens in the coming hours. The radiosonde yields 2,800 J/kg CAPE - this is probably near the high end of UK climatology. I studied CAPE in the UK for my uni dissertation using a WRF simulation, and the highest in the UK during the period of study (2002-2012) was just over 3,000 J/kg CAPE during the August 2003 heatwave - so just highlighting how remarkable this spell is currently. More info in this paper: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/joc.3976

14:00 Discussion Update Latest Surface observations have shown temperatures have reached the low 30s across parts of SE England and Southern England have reached 28-31C. The 11Z Herstmonceux Ascent has a surface parcel lifted given the surface and DP's and over 2,500 j/Kg of CAPE. There is little environmental forcing or ascent however to trigger any convection. The Ascent is a little dry, but not overly so. This implies that the atmosphere over England & Wales is storing large amounts of CAPE. The Herstmonceux ascent indicates that T-Storms when they do develop have the potential to become intense, with tops to over 40,000 ft or to around -60C or 180mbs or slightly above. In order to release this we will need some low level local ascent or convergence or we will need some larger scale atmospheric lift or ascent. The local ascent may occur over parts of Southern and Central England later this afternoon. Mesoscale models suggest some low level confluence will extend to around 925mbs and come together over parts of the Thames Valley, West and NW of London during the late afternoon and evening as the current ESE flow backs more NE over the Midlands, and veers South to SE over parts of Southern England. This suggests that focused ascent will occur and large intense thunderstorms can develop and move slowly WNW in the flow at 850mbs. 850mb Theta-W is also 20-22C across Southern England, much of Wales and into the Midlands too. These storms will be intense but quite scattered. To the South - Airmass imagery indicates more substantial synoptic scale ascent and vorticity is moving north assoc with a well marked shortwave trough moving north. T-Storms have died back this morning during the Diurnal minima over France, but this area is likely to see further intense storms develop through the afternoon and evening and as the trough moves north it will further augment the ascent over Southern England and further intense T-Storms will likely develop at times through the evening and night over Southern PArts. Models are all over the place with regards to where storms break out and individual detail should not be taken too literally. The models are really struggling to resolve the complex thermodynamic structure given their vertical resolution and the rather constant changes and ongoing modification which T-Storms themselves develop. The steering flow is rather poor from the South , so imports from France seem rather unlikely - however as the upper trough moves north it will overrun the theta-W plume and provide some larger scale ascent and spin. Again further intense storms are likely to develop and break out over Southern England during the night, either routed to the surface or from the 850mb level . Many places will miss the storms but where they occur they are likely to release very large amounts of CAPE, Dangerous C/G Lightning, Hail, Torrential rain which may easily give 50-100mm of rain in a very short period of time. Whilst this outlook expires at 06:00 further heavy and intense thunderstorms are likely to develop across Southern England during Thursday which may be more located in Southern Counties of England during the afternoon as a confluence/ convergence zone develops over Southern England. PJB UKWW

Let's not speculate on an event where we have no idea what has caused it eh? Regardless, most UK storms are tame and do no harm, so I stand by my point.

What a night it's been with 3700 images to sort through after what feels like 4 hours of non-stop thunderstorm action all around and often overhead. It started out for me at around 10pm in noticing the cells that was coming up from Birmingham/Wolverhampton which somehow triggered off a cell ahead of it towards Stoke-on-Trent, from there on the line-segment formed and consistently back-built, not too long after it began moving north I was under it for a good 2 or 3 hours with lightning towards my East and South consistently. Quite humbling as it was only around 9pm I had given up and walked the 10mins back home after seeing nothing but blue-sky during the sunset in that direction after watching the earlier mid-Wales cell.

My mum took a sneaky picture of me filming that thunderhead over Oxford...

Paul Blight's forecast for tomorrow.

We are going to moan. If you don’t like it, move on by and comment on something else. You can keep your hot and sunny, heat makes me unwell. And It’s not just hot and sunny, it’s relentlessly hot, sweltering, and for some of us the longer it carries on the worse it gets, The iller we get. the aches and pains, the exhaustion, the tight throats, pounding headaches, the palpitations, the blood pressure rises, the sleepless nights, the sleep deprivation madness, it’s hell for some of us, and why shouldn’t we want to enjoy what one would normally expect from a period of such intense heat? I love a thunderstorm and it’s the only thing that keeps me physically going through a heatwave, the knowledge of the relief at the end, the spectacular explosion that clears the air and the head and settles things back where they belong. rant over.

The atmosphere is alive!!!

Quite an unprecedented spell of heat and storms for some of us. Last night I was in my element. Frequent lightning and thunder crashes for hours from Stoke northwards into Cheshire and then back into the Staffordshire moors, onto Buxton and home. I have nearly 4 hours of video to edit, and I probably won't be able to edit out hardly any of it as there was very little down time. I am very excited about tonights prospects. I am not going to do a forecast as much more experienced and knowledgeable people than me have already done it. But, I am looking at somewhere between Worcester/Shrewsbury as my target area.

How many ppl here will stand outside if a downpour does occur? not only that, enjoying that smell of wet rain on dried fields and concrete? Me! But somebody has to switch that damn storm shield off over us,, might have to resort to doing a bus dance around a bus stop, Hey!.. it worked in the 80s

More importantly, if you are in the yellow warning, it doesn't mean you'll see a storm..

Pretty hard to put into words last night, I’d have it up there with the winter of 2009/10 for extreme events and that’s not hyperbole

Took a still from a video (in a closed group) of a CG strike!

Absolute madness can confidently say these are supercells here, it takes a lot to scare me but these storms are doing the job had big hail the lightning is never ending

Couple of shots I took an hour ago. NW Wales.

2 nights of storms...ambassador you're spoiling us One from tonight and a couple from last night

Just a few grabs of the lightning. It is still flickering away! Some of the rumbles are getting louder again!

T’is a dark and stormy night...

So is this MCS better than yesterday or Mondays or Sundays or Saturdays or the 7 in June asking for a friend

This is my view towards the channel..

Another pic of the storm in London seen all the way from Sandbanks Dorset. Mad

Cap Bomb SW of Harlow

Bought myself a little weather station with 24hourly recordings how accurate it is who knows it showed a max of 30c earlier (possibly slightly under actual high?) and now has hovered around 21.7c for an eternity and humidity has slowly crept up all night now showing 79% here in Gravesend, Kent

So despite this monster STILL going on! I have over 45mins of crappy cam footage. I'm going to just upload the entire thing raw tomorrow. But have at ye a small sample Also I'm sure we had some sort of microburst during the 3rd storm part to pass over (the first one that actually gave us rain, first 2 were dry here), the trees in the garden were almost bending at 90 degrees