Joey.G

Thanks. No meso was just the leading edge with one of the best roll clouds I've ever seen!

@staplehurst thanks for the forecasts, definitely helped me see more storms over the years! I'm down in Gloucestershire today for 2000 trees festival so missing out a little on this mornings activities close to home. Also a bit gutted not to be able to chase this afternoon. Might get a chance to see the beginnings of the activity as it builds and moves away. Front has cleared here now and there's quite a bit of blue sky, humidity feels very high. Definitely ripe and bodes well for the forecast prefrontal development later. Good luck to those who are chasing!

IMHO the level 2 was justified. I'm a tree surgeon in Derbyshire and we've been out all day responding to call outs from power company and local authority. We've been to 25 jobs and personally I was attending a tree that had downed a 11kv line when the squall line went through and another big tree went over right next to us! Definitely the most intense squall I've personally witnessed. (was somewhat East of Nottingham at the time)

Lovely unstable skies here this morning, think its going to be an interesting day. Should finish work at 4 and then I can head out!

Staying put tonight @Supacell? My mums near Gloucester so I'm down here, the lure of the severe box.. The fact u haven't moved is bad omens for me!

Cell over Wales, score one for West

Or yeah maybe it's totally imby and I'm just f*#%ing unlucky!

You're right, can't go around saying things like that without having the proof to back it up. I'm fully willing to accept that it could be an imby perspective, or that I'm recalling the past in a rose tinted light. I think there's quite a few of us on here who, like me, were kids in the 80s and 90s and remember some 'all nighters' or days with multiple storms. These could probably even be narrowed down to a handful of events that we all experienced and had such an impact on us at the time that we're all here on these forums as a direct result! And so it could be that, in remembering them, recent years seem poor in comparison. Yet I'm still convinced that there has been some fundamental change. It is difficult to get an accurate comparison. The number of days with thunder heard is just one indicator and doesn't differentiate between those 'thundery showers' vs a cracking storm. Number of lightning strikes would be a great quantative value but how far back does the data go for that? The European Severe Weather Database could be a good way to compare frequency of events, though there's problems with that as I feel more recent events will have been better reported. I would definitely like to see a similar paper to the one I posted before about the number of mcs'. I think the number and track of them could strongly sway me either way.

It would be interesting to get a real statistical analysis of the decline in the thunder over the past decade or so.. I think its beyond doubt that its a fact.. and see if it can be related/correlated to any other climactic shift. Mean jetstream positions, SSTs, the effect of the freshwater from ice cap melt on the gulf stream.. Kinda makes me want to go back to university.. Any meteorology students on here?! Below is a graphic from a paper by Gray & Marshall showing the track of all MCS' in the UK between 1981 and 1997.I think its probably been on here before. Would be fantastic to see a similar paper covering the period 2001 to 2017.. Even just the number of cases in the same period would be instructive.

Eastbourne looking likely to come good, just a step too far for me. Still think areas west of there are in with a good shout but not for a while yet and I need to leave in an hour or so, so I may as well bail now. Hey ho, look forward to seeing reports

Storm starvation will drive a man to extremes! Heading to Surrey

@Supacell and others out chasing, Smartie has added a post on UKWW stating that the current mcs will move out of the highest theta e plume and decay somewhat while a new mcs will form as the plume moves more over the UK. Sounds like we're all roughly in the ballpark though and as ever itll be a case of running that radar back and forth and trying to guesstimate a sweet spot last minute! I'm near Luton now and toying with the idea of heading to the Surrey Hills. I however did not get the day off work tomorrow and am due in wirksworth at 7am don't mind not sleeping but I'd hate to have to bail in the middle of the action!

Video grab of thunder from a close strike today (language warning!) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UAP1l05igg70bpi4DKuaUGsF68EqspW4/view?usp=drivesdk

Think I just watched that go by, quite a lot of ic but v few cg's. My view from Belper