Sam Kennedy

About to get hit here in Sunderland, can see it approaching over Penshaw monument

I'm not too experienced with this, could this be a supercell? It appears to have a hook

I just took a look at the GFS for tomorrow @ 15:00 I've been out of this for a while, but isn't 2500+ j/kg of CAPE and a lifted index of -10 huge for the UK? What sort of CAPE and LI values were we looking at when we had that huge storm in 2012 which caused all that flooding?

I usually check the CAPE and LI forecasts before we have storms, but yesterday I was more distracted by getting cameras set up in time etc. Does anyone know what the peak CAPE and LI values were for the North East? I'm also wondering about the flooding, I was following the line of storms on radar, and the reflectivity values weren't much higher than what I've normally seen from storms, however the structure and direction of the line resulted in Newcastle being exposed to the storms for a much longer period of time than if the line just passed perpendicular to the city. I guess my question is, was the flooding more to do with the prolonged precipitation due to the structure and direction of the line, as opposed to the "heaviness" of the rainfall? Cheers -Sam

Nearly 3 years ago I decided I wanted to try and take some lightning photos, however, living in Newcastle I'm lucky if I get 5 storms in one year! Yesterday there was a "thunderstorm", there must have only been 5 lightning strikes for the whole duration of the storm. I had to take the photo hand-held, since there was no where practical to set up a tripod in the house! Anyway, here is the photo, it isn't great but it's my first ever lightning photo after 3 years of trying! I have more photos, I will try and find an appropriate place to upload them so there isn't one thread full of photos!