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Cloud structure improving all the time!

This storm is doing it's normal line of duty..... a

Went up onto the hills above town to have a look and saw some lightning but the rain moved in and visibility was rescued to barely anything sadly. Got some nice sky pics before it started though.

THUNDERSTORM WATCH - SUN 09 MAY 2021 Issued 2021-05-09 12:51:41 Valid: 09/05/2021 1200 - 10/05/2021 0600 Forecast Details Upper longwave trough close to the west of the British Isles will make slow progress eastwards over the next 24 hours. At the surface, a fairly deep low will be slow-moving and fill just the west of Ireland during the forecast period. A brisk and moist southerly flow covers much of the UK and Ireland. The moist airmass unstable across Ireland this afternoon – where colder air aloft with closer proximity to upper trough is creating steep lapse rates with surface heating – supporting heavy showers and some thunderstorms. Further east across England, a cold front lying S/C England to Lincs and separating warm higher theta-w plume over SE and near continent will slowly clear east this afternoon and evening. Some mid-level instability on the NW edge of the plume pushing NE across northern France and Low Countries may bring some thunderstorms across the far SE this evening before the cold front clears. … IRELAND / N. IRELAND … Scattered heavy showers and a few thunderstorms will affect much of northern and western Ireland along with western N. Ireland through the afternoon and into the evening, thanks to low pressure close to the west and fairly steep lapse rates from surface heating beneath cold air aloft of upper trough overspreading here. Strong winds aloft may lower to the surface in stronger convective downdrafts to bring locally strong convective wind gusts of 40-50mph. Also, strong 0-1km low level shear could support funnel clouds or even one or two brief tornadoes with any stronger updrafts that rotate thanks to the LL shear. … SE ENGLAND & E ANGLIA … Some uncertain how much instability will develop later on the NW edge of warm/moist high theta-w plume spreading N over France / Low Countries and overspreading SE UK. A shortwave trough moving NE triggered some elevated storms across E Kent this morning and there’s potential that another shortwave moving NE out of France along with a general increase in large scale ascent of approaching upper trough to the west will trigger further heavy showers and elevated thunderstorms to push NE across SE England and East Anglia this evening and into the first part of the night, before the cold front clears east and clears the unstable plume with it. As often the case, lightning activity maybe confined to Kent and coastal East Anglia, but could affect areas further west. Any thunderstorms could produce frequent C-G lightning, high rainfall totals locally – leading to localised flooding, along with strong gusty winds. … SW ENGLAND / WALES … Heavy showers, perhaps with isolated lightning, look to become more widespread across the SW of Britain this evening and overnight, as upper trough overspreads aloft – steepening lapse rates above mild/moist flow at the surface. Issued by: Nick Finnis Forecast on Netweather: https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/uk/convective

Wow, this is fairly active!

One of those moments where you wish it was dark! Would likely see a flash every ~4 seconds or so going by Blitzortung.

Current view towards the Eastern Channel (forgot to charge my good camera so I’m making do with my phone’s!)

Just noticed a shelf cloud to my west! A bit unexpected.

East side of Rennes,France is where the SE need to look,there is some pokey cells just firing off there now.

I’m going to keep up my optimistic blah blah... ...anyhoo, the GEFS 0z does show signs of summer here and there!...and remember, whatever the models show, the arctic influence will continue to diminish..to nothing!!!.. as we go further into summer!...fingers for a decent summer ahead..hopefully with a plume or 3 !

Heard rather loud thunder. Meanwhile in my back garden.

so nice to be checking the lightning maps again! woo hoo storm season is in the room.

Look at the bigger picture?..we don’t all live in Bournemouth..thank god !

Thats simply not true.

First elevated thunder and lightning of the year here!

@Northernlights Picture taken a bit earlier in the year on farm a bit lower down the valley near Altenmarkt, Salburgerland. Highland cattle a popular breed around these parts .

Here’s some photos of that heavy shower that passed by a couple of hours ago. I used some HDR to make the little shelf show up well.

Absolutely pitch black to my west now. Will upload photos later.

What a beast!

Just saw a CG in a much better spot trajectory-wise for my location! Please keep developing there

Quite the storm arriving!

Ominous looking at Dover

And this is the best it could get in May 2021...hmmm?...now we are getting into a Willy waving contest? lol... .

Oh my, try living in Shetland?..I think you would be really happy there!! ...anyhoo, enough of this nonsense!..the week ahead looks milder / warmer than recently..by day & night, and the GEFS 0z longer term looks..not cold!

I concur, there is a balance between being too negative and too positive ..and I think you found it!

That was quite an unexpected noisy wake up call here in Folkestone. Slightly unusual in that we had a good 15 minutes of constant thunder from 7:50 onwards. Would have been far better in the dark as I really couldn't see a great deal of lightning.

Lots of thunder, heavy rain, sounds like and MCs. Just a quite constant rumble.

Currently looking out towards the channel, just saw a lovely orange CG!

The cell that’s producing the majority of the rumbles and occasional flash:

In the last 14 years we have gone back to adding red clover to grass seed mixtures to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere instead of using artificial nitrogen (made from oil) thus lowering our carbon footprint .However clover needs warm growing conditions and so grass is about a month later to come to cutting/grazing , whereas artificial nitrogen is immediately available to the grass even in very cold weather. White clover has always been in grass seed mixtures and is very long lived but red clover which is much better yielding was not very persistant in the field but modern varieties are surviving for up to four years instead of about two. The field you see in the photo was sown in grass in 2018 when the exceptionally dry summer killed a lot of the young clover plants so there is very little clover. Thus we relented about 2 weeks ago and put on artificial nitrogen to get an early bite and got an immediate change of colour and about 4 inches of new growth.This grass will be very short of minerals and energy due to the cold so cattle are being fed silage (pickled grass )as well made last summer.

I've just taken this Zak, and it started to chuck it down as I did.

Looks like it's the showers that passed over here a couple of hours ago that have slowly drifted NE. Didn't do a lot here but they look a bit more intense now than they were here.

Well if mickey mouse wants to come later, he'd be welcome.

Looks like a nice shelf is appearing on there.

Flashes and the occasional rain-shielded CG are becoming visible now, along with nice elevated rumbles. Looks like it’s going to miss us though unfortunately

Anywhere east of a line from the Solent to the Wash, with the risk increasing the further SE you go. Depends on how much of an incursion NW we can squeeze some more humid air. There’s pockets of occasional Altocumulus scuttling N-NE here with the odd patch of T-Cu along with it.

Going by various precipitation predictions, it looks as if (for my area at least) there will be two distinct rounds of activity to keep an eye on; -18:00-20:00 elevated thunderstorms pushing N/NE from Northern France, with some activity developing just ahead of it and maybe coming onshore with a bit of luck? -00:00-02:00 A large multicellular looking feature (quite possibly an MCS) Developing over France/Belgium, with the associated rain shield and maybe even some of the thunderstorm activity itself grazing the channel and Extreme eastern areas of Kent, before pushing into the Southern North sea. All subject to a lot of change of course! Good luck to everyone.

I'd say the instability zone is pretty visible on radar currently. The further west from SE Kent they get, the quicker they collapse so Dover/Folkestone being main target zones for those later.

If only this was further west eh. North Sea is going berserk! Looks like a hail spike was visible on the radar from earlier also.

Even just hearing the elevated thunder is nice! A decent start to the season for us I would say

Morning Certainly a good chance of a few thunderstorms in the far south east during the evening time, some strong thunderstorms possibly develop over France. Here's the airmass satellite this morning, you can see the thundery developments to our south.. Could be some more purple colours appearing in some of those thunderstorm cells moving across and out of France this evening, also over Belgium with quite large hail possible in a few of those, a small chance of this in any isolated ones that may manage to get to the far southeast of England this evening, something to keep a close watch on.. no guarantees ofcourse and though unlikely it could all be to our southeast with limited or no thundery activity over the far southeast. The Arome.. Something that was being suggested yesterday by the models and looks like the ukv above shows it too, which @Mr Frost has also shown is a second possibly organised system moving northnortheast out of France during the early hours of tomorrow, heavy showery rain/possible cluster of thunderstorms with suggestions of it coming out of France slightly west of the preceding thunderstorms this evening, still probably moving in a mostly northnortheast direction. either way looks to be frontal rain later in the far east by the morning tomorrow and clears away.

Great call on the morning action in Kent @staplehurst - the models seemed to be really unsure about whether anything would happen! Time to charge those camera batteries in case I end up in Kent later!

Was very lively for a while, it’d been rumbling very distantly on and off from around 6am but then changed to constant rumbling from the south/SW. Quite a fast moving storm as it’s already moved away. Screen grab of the radar as it went passed:

Distant thunder and flashes to my south. A little teaser before tonight's possible action

Morning all! Good to see some people getting some thunder early on in the day! I think today will be the first real feel of some humidgity feeling weather.. and the first risk at some storms for the year (finally) The further East you are the better and even those on the East coast if it all goes to pot may see distant lightning out over the North Sea IF storms do fire. It is all associated with the relatively humid and warm air that has been drawn up from the south that is clipping the south east.. As always model difference is HUGE AROME - What looks like 2 rounds of storms some early evening before it comes up with what looks like some form of MCS clipping Kent - not sure on lightning amounts though as conditions are not overly favourable our side for storms ARPEGE - Doesn't make much of the first round of storms that the AROME does but does also have some mass of convective rain moving North albiet more east than the Arome, still close enough for many in Eastern areas to see distant lightning if it does contain any/ happens. ICON - Semi agrees with Arome in that some form of convective weather early/late evening. It does have the Mass of convective rain later in the night but doesn't make near as much of a fuss about it than the above 2. ECM - Agrees pretty well with the ICON and Arome - It also shows the Mass of convective rain later in the night but again favours a more easterly solution. EURO 4 - Very bullish about storms - Pretty much has the most western favoured solution in that pretty much anyone at risk of seeing some form of rain/storm. Not really buying this idea and will await the updated runs during the day. Nearly tracks that storm that leaves the North French Coast all the way to Denmark.. Nothing from ESTOFAX yet Met office mentioning of storms in text but more eastern areas. UK Convective weather do have a risk with the slight being moved West depending on how it pans out. I would agree with this idea looking at how many different model outputs there are. SUNDAY EVENING: SE ENGLAND / EAST ANGLIA ... As the flow aloft backs slightly during the afternoon/early evening, the Theta-W plume over France may bulge closer to SE England for a time. Approaching PVA as the upper trough becomes increasingly negatively-tilted over western Europe will result in forced ascent - with potential for both surface-based thunderstorms to develop over mainland France and also elevated showers/thunderstorms more generally over northern France towards evening. It is likely most lightning activity will remain close to France / BeNeLux and the eastern English Channel, however as is often the case in such situations there is a level of uncertainty and some sporadic lightning cannot be ruled out over SE England for a time during the evening hours - as such the SLGT may be expanded westwards if confidence increases. Convective Weather WWW.CONVECTIVEWEATHER.CO.UK Forecasting thunderstorms and severe convective weather across the British Isles and Ireland for up to the next 5 days.

My gut feeling is this morning's activity will possibly be more noteworthy than the evening's offerings - hopefully not, but we'll see how the day evolves

Good morning buddy, Heres the view of the same cloud from Eastbourne towards Bexhill Nice bit of Mammatus for the morning., woken at 6ish to Hail and a distant rumble of Thunder.

Currently 2c and clear starry skies.When will it warm up at nights but at least its dry.