Katrine Basso

Due to the heat and high pollen count, I have a feeling of constant painful pressure in the cartridges of my nose along with inflamed sinus and my skin is suffering from the effects of prickly heat due to the humidity. It made sleeping last night impossible.

There was a warning for a thunderstorm for the Thurrock area but it never came, even the rain did not come. It is going to be a very dry week which means me using a watering can for my front garden. I have not got an outside tap for a watering hose so I resort to using the kitchen's tap but the tap hose connector that I got did not fit and was due to be sent back by Evri but they have not showed up yet.

Last night between 10pm and 11pm there was a massive amount of thunder and lightning which was very loud with my impaired hearing and having double glazed windows. It made me jump and my cat Simba was very scared of the loud noise and flashes of lightning. I felt a mixture of fear and excitement. Simba then hid in his cat cave. It is the first time that I have seen so much lightning for at 3 or 4 years or more. The thunder was louder, louder than normal. There were no met weather warnings yesterday for the unitary authorities (boroughs) Thurrock and Southend who are both independent from the county /borough of Essex.

I can verify that there was a spotless day on the 9th June but the solar flux unit was 100 sfu. Since then the sun has been very active with a high number of sunspots with today's number at 149 with a 140 sfu.

I do not know is the caused by the warmth but I feel so very tired, more than normal and my hips and knees are very painful. I am waiting for a long downpour of rain that lasts more than one hour.

I hope it brings a heavy downpour of rain and plenty of loud thunder and lightning.

My local weather station for South Ockendon keeps on chopping changing the precipitation percentage nearly every 5 minutes as I am hoping for a good downfall of rain. I have never felt warm even when others say it is warm. I am not experiencing any humidity at night and sometimes I have to wear my thick fleece mini onesie. I live in a cold building and it never gets warm even in the height of summer.

AURORA FROTH OVER MINNESOTA: No solar flares. No CMEs. No problem. Yesterday morning in Minnesota, auroras appeared unprompted by a solar storm. Greg Ash photographed the display from Ely, MN: Aurora Borealis / Northern Lights LIVE HIGHLIGHTS! 10 watching now Started streaming 5 hours ago These are the highlights from our live stream northern lights cameras.

The sky is overcast with stratus clouds which usually means that will be little to no rainfall but if it is thick enough, it can produce light drizzle. Hopefully the clouds will become nimbostratus clouds when the clouds thicken. As I want it desperately to rain as it is means don't to have the garden. The temperature is 15 Celsius.

There was a glorious display of thunder and lightning between 23:00 to 00:30 and copious amounts of rain that started before the thunder and lightning and lasted until 08:30 in the morning. Today there was an overcast morning and in the afternoon the grey clouds gave way to unbroken sunshine.

Last night in South Ockendon I was blessed with a magnificent display of thunder and lightning which lasted from 11pm to well after midnight long with a heavy downpour of rain. It was totally unexpected as the wunderground weather forecast was chopping and changing their forecast and it made it look like there was a poor chance of convective weather and that were would only minimal amount of rain. There was lightning seen in my front garden and back garden. As my hearing is not so good and I have double glazing the thunder seemed not so loud and the sheet lightning was completely silent. I saw the first flash of lightning from the kitchen looking out to the back garden as I jumped out of a mixture of surprise and shock. The rain lasted well into the morning and only stopped at approximately 8:30am

I am already out too as I had a glorious display of thunder lightning and copious amount of rain.

I have Fibromyalgia too and it is making the pain in my joints to be more painful than usual and the fatigue has worsened. Strange I am coping with the warmth much better now. I have been looking at the weather forecast for South Ockendon on wunderground and it showed earlier on in the afternoon that there will 85% risk of precipitation from 10pm to 1pm and later on the afternoon it gone up from 100% of precipitation at 1pm. Now at 19:22 precipitation went down to 89% with thunder-showers and at midnight it went up to 98% with heavy thunderstorms. I think it will be a nowcast whether we get rain or not as the forecast keeps on changing. I do not think there will be thunderstorms as the humidity level is too low.

Thank you for your kind explanation.

Something, that I cannot understand, is as we are entering solar maximum there have been very few auroras. There seemed to me more auroras during solar minimum.

There has been plenty of rain in South Ockendon and it has been raining continuously since 12:30pm and it is 6pm now. Don't have to water the garden with all the lovely rain I am having.

AFTERGLOW OF A GEOMAGNETIC STORM: An interplanetary shock wave hit Earth's magnetic field on April 27th. It wasn't a big one--just enough to spark an unexpected G1-class geomagnetic storm. Greg Ash photographed the afterglow from Duluth, Minnesota. "It was really neat listening to the ice growl and shift while watching the auroras," says Ash. "A meteor streaked through the frame just as I was taking the picture."

SUNLIGHT vs MOONLIGHT vs NORTHERN LIGHTS: A CME hit Earth's magnetic field on April 14th. At the moment of impact, the sun was shining over Iceland. However, the resulting geomagnetic storm lasted *just* long enough for auroras after nightfall. Todd Salat sends this picture from Godafoss Falls:

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Joel Weatherly in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, captured this shot of the aurora borealis on April 10, 2022, during the G3 storm that happened on that night. He wrote: “Last night we were treated to a surprise G3-class geomagnetic storm. During the storm’s peak, auroras arced overhead and gained faint pinkish-red tinges. The bright star near the centre is Vega, a brilliant sight in our springtime skies.”

CHINESE ROCKET PHOTOBOMBS AURORA: A week-long mystery has just been solved. On Tuesday, March 29th, webcams and sky watchers in the interior of Alaska, witnessed a strange blue ball of light cut across the night sky. "It seemed like it had something that was spinning inside," Fairbanks photographer Leslie Smallwood told local news station KUAC. Physicists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks had no explanation--except it looked gaseous.

There was a very brief flash of lightning between 15:45 to 15:48 in my back garden in South Ockendon followed by a few rumbles of thunder. Then rain, hail and graupel followed by another very brief flash of lightning between 15:47 to 15:53. The thunder and lightning was rather puny.

THE SOUTHERN LIGHTS: What should you do when a CME hits Earth's magnetic field? "Get on a plane," says Ian Griffin of the Otago Museum in Dunedin, New Zealand. On April 1, 2022, he joined 270 aurora chasers on a flight toward the Antarctic Circle--and this is what they saw:

Thurrock must be the only way there has not been no snow, no sleet, no hail or frost. There must be some sort of barrier that stops all cold weather.

AURORAS LOVE EQUINOXES: A CME passed near Earth yesterday, March 20th. It didn't hit. But at this time of year a near miss is enough, because auroras love equinoxes. Christopher Mathews witnessed a beautiful display from his backyard in Hraunborg, Iceland:

Sensational sky over Aviemore taken yesterday.