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Big Bird

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Everything posted by Big Bird

  1. Ahh I've waited so long for the convective season in the UK to resume. And now finally the time has come! Everything written here seems to be only about storms confined to the South-West, but around 4:15-4:20 this afternoon a beefy shower over Rugby, Warwickshire brought two brilliant flashes of lightning just as I was coming back from work there. In the summer I would sneer at this type of "storm", but after 203 days of being storm-starved (previous thundery activity observed on the 25th of August) today's event felt like bliss!
  2. There was a flash of lightning about half an hour ago here in Oxford. Completely unexpected! The detectors didn't show anything in the area, either, with the nearest strikes being apparently in the Peterborough area...
  3. Yes, you were right! It's just started to rain here and thunder is rumbling away. Disappointed that it isn't a little more spectacular, but I guess that the main bulk of the storm is yet to come!
  4. Hey folks, do you think there's any chance that the Swindon storm will reach Oxford? Or is it likely to either die out before getting here or pass the city by?
  5. The biggest hailstorm I've ever seen has just passed through Oxford, accompanied by several lightning strikes. All this after a beautiful sunny morning. Absolutely loving today's weather!
  6. I had the luck to be right under the first lightning strike of the day - the one in Oxford at 7:40 this evening. Gave me quite a start - completely unexpected, I'd thought the storms wouldn't come until well into the night. It was a very welcome surprise, anyway! This makes 2 consecutive days with thunder in Oxford and 4 altogether this year. That's as much as I had in the whole of my previous two-and-a-half years studying here!
  7. Had an amazing storm here in Oxford just after midnight! LOTS of lightning and thunder, including some direct overhead strikes. What confused me very much, though, was that as soon as the storm started to die away I switched on my computer and checked the lightning detectors (Netweather and blids.de), expecting to see something impressive, but instead saw absolutely NOTHING over Oxford! The nearest strikes were shown as being in the London/Luton area! How's that possible, when I counted about 30-40 lightning strikes and some of the thunder was right overhead?
  8. OK, I think it will be: 20C - April 8th (yes, I foresee another beautiful, warm and sunny Easter Sunday in store!) 25C - May 22nd 30C - June 6th 35C - July 2nd (I think that that date will bring us the highest temperatures of the year and a huge outbreak of thunderstorms towards the evening )
  9. Hey everyone. About an hour ago I thought I heard several faint rumbles of thunder in Oxford. Unfortunately I was at a meeting, in a room without a window, so I had no way of checking if this was really a storm. Do any of you know if there was really anything interesting in the Oxford area around 9pm this evening?
  10. Just got woken up by a short but torrential downpour in Oxford. I certainly didn't expect convection this early in the day! Now the sun is peeping out from between turbulent clouds, it feels hot and humid. Looks like a very fun day ahead!
  11. Yes, I can confirm that Oxford had a storm! That's the second one in the space of a week, yay! Last Saturday evening a Cumulonimbus developed right over the city and moved eastwards, didn't bring any rain but the thunder rumbled around for quite a while. Today's storm was a little more eventful, though not hugely spectacular - lots of rumbles from about 4.45 to 5.10 but they were all very quiet and toned-down, one lightning strike in the distance and a short sharp shower, that's all. OH WOW! Even as I was writing the last sentence there was a huge flash of lightning, and I thought the storm was already over! Better switch my computer off. Bye, good luck everyone!
  12. I come from Gdansk, Poland, which gets some pretty intense storms (although nowhere near as intense as some of the storms that often hit central or southern Poland). In October 2009 I began my studies in the UK, and the time I've spent here since then has been absolutely fantastic except for one thing - no storms! All I got here in Oxford was a single rumble of thunder on June 6th 2010 and another one on June 13th. The only time I've witnessed a really good storm in the UK was on July 2nd 1999 in Aberdovey, Wales. After a very hot day, late in the evening this tremendous storm moved in from the west across the Irish Sea. No rain at all, but loads of lightning and amazing clouds of a sort of purply-pinky colour moving across the sea towards the land. I watched it all from an upstairs window in a house perched in the hills above the village - the view was superb. The only other time I've seen any decent storms in the UK was on June 28th and 29th 2005 in Montgomery, Wales, but they were nowhere nearly as spectacular. Back in Gdansk I've seen some pretty awesome storms, though. 12th April 2000 was a memorable day - it started off rainy, then about midday the sun came out and it became extremely hot and humid for April. It stayed like that until exactly 6.30pm when I suddenly noticed that something seemed different. I looked out of the window and saw this pitch-black cloud advancing from the south-east. I've never such a black cloud since. It seemed all the blacker because it hadn't yet obscured the sun which was still shining brightly, so that the contrast between bright sun and black cloud produced a particularly scary effect. Once the storm moved in it was really spectacular - masses of lightning which lasted well into the night. The summers of 2006 and 2007 were great for thunderstorms in Poland. Palm Sunday, April 9th 2006, brought a storm which produced only 3 claps of thunder but they were absolutely deafening ones, accompanied by the most amazing swirling clouds. They reminded me a bit of the clouds you see in TV programmes about tornadoes in the USA - it wasn't a tornado but those clouds were just so "alive". That year the warm air lasted well into the autumn months, which resulted in several great autumn storms - the best of these being on October 2nd, which brought a stunning shelf cloud. Whereas in 2007 a record-breaking number of storms occurred in June. The best days were the 14th to the 16th - a massive hailstorm about midday on the 14th, an extremely electrically active storm on the evening of the 15th and a storm with the heaviest rainfall I've ever seen in the early afternoon of the 16th. Last summer, when I went back to Poland for the vacation, there were lots of storms - sadly none of them very spectacular, but still plenty. On July 24th it thundered literally ALL DAY. And between August 13th and 17th there were 5 days in a row with at least one thunderstorm on each. There was also some great thundersnow when I went back for the Christmas vacation, on December 12th and 13th. Hope I haven't bored you all with these stories of storms in another country, it's just that I miss storms so much that I have to vent my feelings somehow...
  13. This topic may have been discussed on this forum already - if so, please forgive me. Is it likely that there will be an extreme weather event on Friday January 7th? If you look at the BBC weather forecasts for that day, you will see that localities in Warwickshire and Worcestershire such as Birmingham, Leamington Spa or Worcester are supposed to have temperatures of 0 to 2 degrees, whereas for that same day BBC predicts for neighbouring Oxfordshire temperatures of 9 or 10 degrees. Further south and east the forecasted temperatures for Friday are also very high. Surely such a setup, with a jump of almost 10 degrees over the distance of a few miles, is likely to produce thunderstorms or at least strong winds? So far I have found BBC forecasts to be very reliable, but is this a blooper? Or is there really any other evidence to suggest that on Friday the boundaries of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire may be in for something exciting?
  14. Thank you for your advice (haven't worked out how to quote on this forum yet, but I'm referring to all those whose responded to the Oxford question). I'll try and catch this exciting-looking storm down south!
  15. Hey everyone, any chance of a thunderstorm here in Oxford? Do you think I'd better stay put and wait for a storm or go chasing the one currently in the Swindon area?
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