Flash bang flash bang etc

Jamie M awesome! Was this to the north of the storms looking towards the south? I only ask as I think usually on a typical storm moving east the southern edge is often the most active? Or I might be wrong… this would potentially mean where you were considering the storm was moving in from the east you would have a view of the most intensive point of electrical activity… I think… only say this cos you had a great view into the clouds from your location. All I saw was sheet lightning haha

Eagle Eye knew it! Saw this the other day - also monday looking ripe for thundering peels

TJS1998Tom I’ve heard some mention of rather large areas of MUCAPE which is basically ‘night energy’ for storms. Looking at all the other synoptics it would seem that you can’t rule out some active albeit discrete cells anywhere around the midlands as the night progresses, and well into tomo. That said I wouldn’t lose important sleep watching the horizon. It will *hopefully* wake you up if it happens

Funny how May has traditionally been the start of the season and last night’s storms literally waited until May 2nd to arrive

Looks like Saturday could be a good one for the SE corner of the SE corner of the SE

I accept forecasting isn’t an exact science but this experimental prediction is based on existing conditions so don’t immediately write it off as impossible

Okay I need an answer to this one important question: how low can this go? South of the M4?

Hate to dampen ppls hopes in the south but it’s highly likely we won’t have storms this evening. Don’t waste time watching the continent it’s not gonna happen.

Some shots. In fact the only really shareable ones. Photo 3 was one of a handful of visible bolts throughout the whole event but this particular one struck probably somewhere within a mile of my position and around 1 second after this photo a huge shotgun boom cracked out. It was scary ish but it was also amazing. edit: the video doesn’t show all the flashes. There were so many instantaneous elevated ones (of the flickering variety) but the camera just doesn’t pick them up IMG_4092.mov

As the number of flashes people estimated last night seems to keep growing, I’m going to officially update my guess to approximately 1,000,005 (the last 5 were once I got home) in all seriousness though I would say my first guess was wrong. There were at least 10 per minute at the very lowest end of the scale, and up to probably quite easily 50 at peak intensity. with some rudimentary maths: the storm lasted 3 hours(ish). So 60 x 3 is 180 minutes of action overall. an average of about 30 fpm (flashes per minute) 30 x 180 = 5400. I’m going to add another 600 to account for the quite exceptional duration of the peak intensity (and that there were multiple bouts of activity) and round it off to 6000. I think the poster who claimed well over 100,000 might need to check the filament in their bedroom striplight

Good storms. Elevated - only saw about 4 forks out of about probably 2000 flashes over 3 hours. Essentially it was backbuilding over our area. 7/10 I think - not exceptional and hampered by heavy rain. Not being able to see the lightning directly was a little bit frustrating but the intensity of it was pretty impressive When’s the next one?

Skies here are milky in a good way

Thought I’d share this as it’s pretty on point (for someone like me anyway) Chasers Pop.mp3

Hello everyone! just surfed a few redundant storm threads to get here - so one chase down and *potentially* another one tonight!