Evening thunder

Pretty lively gusts with rain yesterday morning, reaching 46mph on my station (a notch down from the 48mph we've reached on 2 days this month). Then it cleared by mid-late morning (can't remember exactly when) to a nice mostly sunny day. Went to Exmouth in the afternoon and half the beach is now on the road.. Saw something I hadn't seen the day before though, it was a frosty start with a -2.3c min during the night, but despite the temperature climbing to 9.2c during the day, I found in some shaded spots there was still patches of frost low down on the ground/grass at the end of the day! Never seen that after the temp reaching 9.2c before.. at a guess as the wind was light southerly these shaded spots were also sheltered from any breeze as well as the sun, so cold ground/air near the ground wasn't disturbed..? This morning a brief line of heavy rain, followed by just light stuff has only given 1.8mm. Looks to have got it's self together east of here again.

I'm kind of surprised at how some have had no frost including some in areas like the Midlands for example. Here we had -4c on the 5th December.

Yeah we didn't have as much rain as forecast, could see that was going to be the case from the radar yesterday evening. We had 5.8mm but even that caused a river response. Windy last night with a gust of 42mph here. Currently sunny again but just had a brief squally shower with bits of hail take the temp down from 10.6c to 8c. On the 23rd-24th we had 44.6mm of rain according to the Davis in 24 hours, though that could have over-read slightly (manual totaled about 42mm though it's possible a bit of rain missed it due to very strong winds) Some flooding of the River Otter early morning, and saw the Rivers Axe and Clyst well over their floodplains.

Some people are gunna get/are getting real wet in Devon/Cornwall with that squall tracking virtually parallel to it's orientation again. I have a feeling it will go west of here, to where the previous squall happened, and split and miss me again haha. Wind really got up again here too, not far off earlier today.

That happened here earlier, again..There must be a narrow strip of the Isle of Wight and some other central southern parts getting a lot of rain.. squall line lying parallel to it's motion so some real torrential rain lasting for half an hour or more in places.

The wind has eased a lot here and rain virtually stopped, though light rain again now. Had 23mm according to the Davis (though that could be a slight overread... the manual gauge says 21.4mm though it's possible it had some slight sheltering due to the wind strength). Max gust in this valley was 48mph, same as Wednesday evening, although some minor sheltering due to the neighbours house being in the way.. Also went right through the gap in the squall line, which seems to have happened with every interesting squall line feature recently..

Yeah that's the one I was thinking of, not sure what it's called either. For some reason thought I was in the regional thread before so spent a while looking for my post/reply in there Wind died down now a lot here now, had about 23mm here, though now the rain has virtually stopped at the moment, and we went through a gap in the squall line as seems to have happened every time in this unsettled spell.

I wonder if that's the road up East Hill being like a river like sometimes happens. Local stream high here, and river Otter quite high and rising fast. Rain just getting heavy again looks like the river will flood tonight unless there's less rain than forecast. Highest gust recorded so far is 48mph, the same as Wednesday evening, though we are in a valley and my anemometer does sometimes get slightly sheltered from the S and SSW due to the house next door.

That is 100% a joke, it's 9c at the surface and +2c and rising at the 850mb level lol. Pretty rough here near Sidmouth now, very heavy rain at times (like as I type this) sweeping through on strong winds. Lots more to come, though the radar near lands end has decided now would be a good time to stop working. Local forecast reckons 60-80mm in places, more over Dartmoor.

Aha we now have an amber warning for rain! Looking at the frontal wave shown in many models I reckon that's a good call. Just in reference to John's post, not sure if he's referring to me but i'm rarely critical of the Met Office and think they do a good job and often come in for too much stick on here and elsewhere, I'd just have thought it would be far easier to leave the previous warning until the newer update was issued, rather than leave an hour gap where someone might check the latest warnings who doesn't get a chance to again before tomorrow. However maybe their system means this isn't practical. I wonder if they will now put a wind warning on top of the rain warnings for the south, or if they feel that will make the map too complex. My only issue with that would be that location forecasts which many people would look at would only show the rain warning symbol and nothing for wind, I do think the gusts approaching 80mph they forecast for some S/SE coasts needs highlighting though maybe that's being too picky and hopefully many will get the message through BBC forecasts or actually reading the warning in detail

They will be issuing updated warnings atm though I'm surprised they take a while to update the warnings after removing the old ones, if it were me I'd wait until the update was ready to upload before deleting the previous warning, otherwise some may look at the Met Office site to check the warnings and think 'That's ok no warnings for wind looks like it won't be so bad now'

BBC weather on News 24 was quite brief but just brought up an amber warning triangle for tomorrow, presumably a sign the Met Office are updating their warnings and an amber warning will soon appear on the website?

No they didn't, though unfortunately some of the public, if they remember, will think they were right and this is somehow the end of Typhoon Haiyan.. I'm wondering if there may be an amber warning is issued for the south or perhaps the SE, as a frontal wave seems to strengthen the winds slightly more for the SE on Monday evening/night, with coastal 80mph gusts possible. Also this frontal wave prolongs/renews the rainfall in the south so it's possible they will issue an amber for rain too. For example the NAE and EURO4 models give quite widely 40mm in the south, and some places 50-60mm (perhaps more over hills i.e South Dartmoor. in fact the EURO4 00z (latest) showed 50mm widely for southern counties, and 75mm+ over Dartmoor and south Wales (although a small amount of this includes showers today). NAE 06z shows the highest 50mm+ totals into the SE and around/over higher ground of SW England and South Wales. Almost forgot to add I also think we may today see an amber warning for parts of Scotland and perhaps some of Northern Ireland for Tuesday.

For much of the country all year, on top of a thick ice sheet: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/geologyOfBritain/iceAge/images/Fig2_British_Isles_2.jpg (Last glacial maximum ice extent)

Interesting amount of lightning strikes detected with the showery activity for example in the Irish Sea and NW Scotland:

Yes - I would find interest in them as in any time of year. Although my tolerance of them may be a bit lower (except any thunderstorms) and I would be a bit frustrated at the lack of summery weather and warmth if it was through the set up you said in your previous post. I like some summery weather in summer. However it's not summer, and in Autumn/Winter it is meant (as in it's normal) to be like this at times (although you could argue it's meant to be unsettled at times in summer too, thankfully for me as I'm not sure I'd like a Mediterranean drought summer). I do like cold and snow in winter but that's very unlikely to happen all the way through, and I also like these changeable unsettled spells so would rather this than boring stuff in between. Mind you these unsettled spells tend to provide more interest for me at home in Devon than at my uni location and presumably other central/eastern parts, so i'd probably be less interested in them there (though still prefer them to cloudy highs or Bartlett type SW flows, partly due to more sunshine). I guess I'm more a 'weather enthusiast' type rather than just 'snow enthusiast' which seem to be many people on here now, more like the general public not that interested except for snow. This forum seems to have drifted that way in recent years not that anyone says that's a bad thing. Though not sure why a few seem to make a point of saying they 'cant understand' others finding different weather types interesting as if they shouldn't or if there's something odd about them doing so.. Maybe I should take my interest in other weather to a different forum. Anyway this is more than just wind and rain for me at least. Various other phenomena interspersed with clear skies in fresh PM air, with more variability thrown in than most other set ups would produce. Of course if it was just constant wind and rain every day with no sun I would tire of it. This somehow turned out to be quite a long post..

So in the last 2 days I've seen: heavy rain, gales, clear sunny skies, calm winds, frost, mist, stormy seas, a very high river, showers, hail, starry skies with a well defined frontal clearance and moonlit CB'S, and a spectacular sunset along with a rainbow.. if that's boring then you're not really interested in most weather types. The only thing i'd prefer perhaps is more frost and snow, although I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Tampere, Finland recently and there was snow cover but much less varied weather. It would be disappointing to not get a proper cold spell with some frost and snow at some point and I may be a bit impatient if nothings happened or about to happen come the end of January, but I'd very much rather have this weather than a cloudy dull Bartlett or high like recently with nothing much happening.

Blimey Plymouth recorded a 85mph gust at some point according to xcweather! No particularly defined squall crossed them on radar either though there was one just before them which weakened on approach.

Yeah it's definately there, sorry I might not have been very clear that I just meant for my locality. Pretty well defined for most north of me as you say.

Well the squall line dissolved for me and turned into a lighter gap in the rain band.. lol. Still quite well defined north of me though. We did have a 48mph gust earlier which is the 2nd highest I've recorded on my station in this valley. Was quite stormy sounding earlier with heavy rain lashing the windows and noisy gusts. Wind has now shifted to the west now so the frontal boundary at the surface has gone through.

Some very heavy rain with large drops slamming the window, but that's nothing compared to what's on the radar out west. Average wind speed 27mph gusting 42mph which is quite high for my valley station (only the 28th October gave higher this year). Edit: Gust of 46mph which is the strongest this year. Doesn't sound that strong perhaps but dad had just asked me if the stream was going to flood, and the gust got a 'is the roof gunna stay on?' response from him.

There were orange warnings out for a large swath, though they seem to have been taken off now as winds have reduced. The low level gusts of 80-90moh were similar to the St Judes storm in places, though covering a larger area. I guess the Met Office don't have a 'storm surge' or 'flooding' warning category though (not from heavy rain), that seems to be up to the Environment Agency. Definitely seems to be a big event though..

-2.8C min at home last night before the cloud came in. 5C at Exeter AP at the moment apparently, looks like it's the coldest place in the country. Here at uni It's been cloudy all day though some blue sky appearing outside my window now.

You get these occasionally though thats quite an impressive example. One happened on my local river in 2009: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/4227030/Spinning-ice-disc-phenomenon-seen-in-British-river-for-first-time.html said to be the first time ones been recorded on England but I doubt it. Then in December 2010 I saw a similar formation myself on the same river less than 100m from my house.. although it had sort of frozen back into the surrounding ice:

-4c at home this morning, the coldest so far, though I am back at uni now where there was only a light frost. That is only slightly higher than the coldest min any time last winter season (including March), and 1.5C lower than anything last January or Febuary! but that more shows how rubbish they were for low minima. had -2.1c at home on Saturday and -3.2c on Sunday. Here are a couple pictures I took at home on Saturday morning which had a beautiful frost/shallow fog/sunrise combination: