Fiona Robertson

I see the wee tag-along behind Hurricane Lee that I screenshotted this morning is now tropical storm Margot.

Anyone noticed what's tagging along in the wake of Hurricane Lee?

Keeping a close eye on Lee. Someone mentioned it was eerily similar to Irma so that's a concern. Second point, which is really a question, and apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere. I'm having real trouble with Cesium Tropical Atlantic. I had noticed that the images during Idalia were really slow and sometimes were a patchwork, with parts of the image being old ones. It was occasionally very misleading when it came to the position of the hurricane, like sometimes hours out of date, even when I refreshed the whole thing. Since Idalia, I can only connect using VPN via a US server and the satellite images that do come up cover only the Atlantic basin.

Fresh breeze? FRESH BREEZE? BBC weather says we have a fresh breeze, yet met office chart shows our winds are gusting to between 35 and 37 mph. On the Beauford scale that's on the high end of near gale. Veggie garden devastated, brassica cage blew away, fleece covers ripped to shreds, bean wigwams collapsed, leeks and onions snapped. If I'd had a bit of a warning of sorts, like "near gale", I could have been prepared. But no, I just had a quick look at the wee summary on the BBC site.

It was plain blue,but the edge of the big cloud wasn't far away.If the wind had been from the east I could explain it as drops being blown westwards towards me. Maybe something to do with changes in wind direction with altitude.

i'm currently being rained on. I'm just west of Livingston and the radar is showing some rain, however above me is blue skies. I'm west of the rather tall cloud system which is giving this rain and the wind seems to be from the south...so why is it raining on me? Sun is out, heat is oppressive... and I'm being rained on. Granted it's very light rain and isn't gonna do the veggie garden any good, but it's weird.

Someone may have already mentioned this, I'm not going back through all of the replies to find out cos I'm just home after the drive from hell. Upgrading the warning from yellow to amber almost an hour AFTER the snow had begun to accumulate in the Central Belt doesn't really help many people... cos they're sound asleep! I was lucky, I was still awake and watching the rainfall radar long before the snow started and I could see for myself how bad it was going to get. That's why I was able to change our alarm clock to ensure I could get hubby to his chemo appointment on time. I'm no meteorologist so if I could see it coming, why was the Met Office upgrade to amber so late?

If I may ask a question, does anyone remember when a few days ago the GFS threw up a wee area of circulating low in the channel and no other model seemed have it? Sadly, I saw it in passing when I was in a hurry and I can't remember if it was in the previous thread or this one or even who posted it. My question is this- was that the wee low which ended up dumping so much snow over the SE? The only reason it stood out to me is cos I have a soft spot for the GFS after it's stellar performance on picking up the summer temp records...yes, I'm far too emotionally invested in the GFS. It's Hector the palm tree all over again.

Just noticed a 157.7 mph on western eye wall

That makes sense. Been on a live cam hunt, only working one I have found so far is this one located in Punta Gorda Live Camera at King Fisher Fleet | King Fisher Fleet KINGFISHERFLEET.COM

Gut feeling again, nothing more, but it's gonna be a Cat 5 if it has another 6hrs before landfall. Those waters are warm.

I've been keeping my head down after my Canadian friends gave me dog's abuse over Hurricane Fiona and I just quietly followed a wee tropical depression... until it became Ian, my late father's name and I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach. We're obviously keeping it in the family this year. Anyway, someone has probably posted this already, but have they managed to firm up the timing and location of landfall?

TORRO has issued a tornado watch

Don't knowif this belongs here, but it's such a stunningly beautifulimage that I wanted to share it. This is Hurricane Danielle, SSEC: Global, Visible (15min), screenie taken at 19:29 BST.

Got no piccies, but it's been a tad insane out Livingston way. Went through a period of distant weak flickering, so son and I wandered out into garden, carefully, for a good view. Just got there when the transformer about 20 metres from us got a strike and we hit the deck fast. And that explains the no piccies- we were too busy crawling on our hands and knees back indoors. This cell blew up out of nothing over Sanquar. After that it was constant lightning. Looking at a number of maps for lightning and none of them do it justice. Best lighting activity in years. Edited to change Symington to Sanquar, I got lost...

The GFS - the little model who could. Once there was a little model. He didn't feel he was any better than the other models, or even that he was as good as they were. Still, he knew he had a job to do and he did it to the best of his ability. Some of the models thought they were better than the GFS and if truth be told, sometimes in the past they'd been right and he'd been wrong. The memories of those times made the GFS sad. He'd had a glorious time a few years before when he thought he saw a heatwave coming long before the other models noticed and he'd turned out to be right. He knew he could do it again, he just had to wait for the right conditions to come along. And then one July day the GFS thought he saw indicators of a startling heatwave with record breaking temperatures. Oh, he was so excited and he told all the other models. They looked at his charts, they looked at him silently... and then they all pointed and laughed and the GFS felt so humiliated... but he knew he was right. On the next run, regardless of his previous humiliation he produced a very similar chart as before... annd again all of the other models pointed and laughed, but not quite as loudly this time. Day after day, he kept seeing the indicators of a heatwave approaching and eventually another model wandered over and whispered quietly to him "I think you're right, wait until you see my next output!" Sure enough there was another model putting out a chart predicting temperatures very close to the ones that the GFS had predicted. This time the other models still pointed and laughed, but the laughter was quieter, a little more hesitant. And then another model said "I see it too!"... and then another... and another. By this time nobody was laughing at the GFS. The big two days finally dawned. This was the moment of truth or even DA TROOF! On the Monday the temperatures were astounding, so high that Scotland and Wales both broke their all-time high temps as predicted by the GFS. He felt so pleased, but he worried that maybe the next day it would all go wrong. Tuesday was the really big day, the day that he had predicted that the UK would reach or exceed 40C. He hardly slept that night, partly cos it was so hot and sticky, but mainly cos he was worried. Tuesday dawned and all of the models crowded around brandishing their charts. They were all pretty much of a sameness. The overnight heat gave the day a head start and by lunchtime, Heathrow reported an all time high of 40.3C. The GFS had done it! He'd been the very first to see this coming and NOBODY was laughing at him now. They all gathered round him and gave a great big cheer... for the little model who could. (Mods - I understand you may want to remove this, can you drop a copy wherever you think it fits and let me know. I put it here because the last two days have been momentous and I felt that the little model who could deserved his story to be told.It is all about models.

Finally been able to log in after the server move! Thought I was gonna have to sit out this historic weather event. Anyway, on to models. I noticed the amber alert area for Mon/Tues has been extended up the east coast of Scotland as far as Dundee, so that now includes me. Thankfully I'd already made plans for the horses for Mon/Tues, involving keeping them in their cool stables and hosing them down if necessary. However my model question is on the breakdown of this heat. Given I have to worry about heat and pasture etc and I'm rubbish at working out anything on the models, what sort of breakdown are we looking at? Is it just a gentle fading away or does it have a chance to go off with a bang. Last time I looked at dewpoints for my area on Tues it was saying 17C, but that was some time last week. Does anyone have the predicted dewpoints for the next few days and then can someone explain what it all means? I'm not looking for anyone to forecast the weather in my garden, just a little help in fathoming out what the models are telling me.

Believe it was St Thomas.

I did NOT need that link!!! Now I'm hooked. I've watched 2 come in, one a Qatari A380 and I'm gonna have to go lie down in a darkened room. I landed at Edinburgh just as Storm Ali was hitting in 2018. NEVER AGAIN! Good luck to all of the pilots and crew and passengers who are trying to land in this. Hope they all stay safe. P.S. Second Qatari A380 just failed a second time.

It's a good job everyone is up and about, reading this new red warning... oh wait. This reminds me of an upgrade the Met office did for my area a few years ago... at 9.40 am AFTER peeps had gone to work and kids had gone to school. I understand they don't want to put out a red until they're sure, but as someone suggested earlier a red watch is a good idea, especially given the current sutuation and where the little tick on the matrix was. To everyone affected by this stay safe.

Stunning piccies of mammatus clouds during Dudley yesty. Storm Dudley's weird and wonderful clouds WWW.BBC.CO.UK Mammatus cloud formations could be seen from parts of Scotland during Wednesday's storm.

Maybe sometimes it's better to call it a change in track of the strongest winds, rather than an upgrade/downgrade. Yes, a reduction in max gust prediction for a given area could be called a downgrade for that area, but it avoids the suggestion that the system overall has been upgraded/downgraded. The track uncertainty is going to result in predicted max gusts fluctuating for a good few hours yet.

Currently we've had some bands of heavy rain. The wind has all but disappeared after last night's roaring sound in our chimney. There's hardly a twig moving right now, but there's a weird, soft rumbling sound above us. Is this the infamous "calm before the storm"?

Does anyone have a chart of the current situation wrt this puppy that's coming out of Canada and is gonna set this whole thing off? Please bear in mind I'm an enthusiastic and utterly incompetent amateur and would need a wee arrow drawn with magic crayons to identify it.

Every year I ask someone to explain sting jets to me and every year some very kind souls do just that and give me links. I read it all and I think "Yeah... I get it now" and every year I subsequently see a post and realise "Nope, don't got it!" and ask again. I have a blind spot when it comes to grasping this. Currently, after spending the early part of winter reading up on them I've managed to get to the point of "sting jet BAD!"