Storm & Convective Discussion - 02/07/15 Onward - Heat & Plumes

[Mapantz]

Short and sweet..

For my haunt, it was the best display since 2005, it may have even pipped it. I had over 2hrs of lightning here.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Mapantz

[marksp]

Not a bad night then!

 

24hrlightning-0407-0755.png

 

Hello Paul and other Net weather followers, definitely a truly great night, first all nighter from me, or  until 4.30am.

even though the storms were great (although as some have said struggled to see forks here but constant lighting and thunder all round for 2 hours was enough.

 

I find the waiting, and expectation as well as reading the comments from other members just as much fun. The family even asked me to wake them up, but no need, the thunder woke the whole town.

 

lets hope we have some more, and it was great for the storms to effect such a big area.

[Richard Taylor]

Looks like the storms have made it here - torrential rain now & couple of rumbles of thunder, suspect to our SE off the coast.

[> mark]

From what i could see, i think we were rather sandwiched between the storms to my ENE over the W London areas and the edge of the Bournemouth storm travelling NNE. There was very little rain and not much in the way of thunder. There was a LOT of IC activity and some good looking CG. For this area, last night did not live up to last July (17th) which did get stuck overhead with amazing thunder and CG activity. Sounds like some areas got somewhat more action but I would be interested in the overall ratio of IC vs CG. Is that info available somewhere?

This area is a little odd. Storms and snow events quite often "split" W & E but when overhead can rattle around for a while. Probably something to do with the Chiltern Hills topography.

Anyway, this morning feels a lot more humid and warm than I was expecting ...... rain please :-)

[Harry]

A forecast for more storms tonight possibly in SE England and East Anglia. Looks like our old nail biter 'imports' this time.

Very warm and humid here today, though sky flat as a witches tit! Was 24C at 09:45 this morning though I suspect that may temper as the SW'erlies kick in. Not bothered looking at charts - if instability is shown, great. If not, expect any imports that come close to die on their western edge with electrical activity staying on the eastern flank...heard it here first lol

[DanN]

Paul S

 

Bumped into your mate Pete Scott at Stansted last night, he showed me a nice spot (thanks again, Pete) for shooting CG's against the ATC tower - nothing hit to our disappointment   Still, nice to blow the dust off the camera and see some UK lightning.

 

Not the best pic (but best of the night), I'm a bit rusty this year...

 

[Harry]

Seems I am not too popular on here today so going back under my rock for the rest of the summer, enjoy the storms for the rest of the summer have a feeling its going to be a long and thundery summer.

Aww don't say that Paul - very much enjoy your contributions which are always insightful and measured. Hope you're right about the thunder year - the next 1-2 weeks seems a bit Atlantic dominated to me. As an El Niño year, which if I recall was attributed to monster MCS' and heat waves in the 90s (first time I heard that term back then), my fingers are crossed

[TwisterGirl81]

Amazing pictures guys, so jealous...

Can anyone enlighten me as to why the thunderstorms pretty much eluded Devon and Cornwall, I thought we were forecast sometbing, had no rain and only saw two flashes and a one bit of thunder from a tiny pretty tame cell that moved to the west of Exeter

[Eye to the sky]

Having chased both Wednesday night and last nights storm I have to say that although both were great the one on Wednesday night was better. The lightning frequency in that storm are the like I have never witnessed with more than 1 flash every second, last night's were about 1 every 10-20 seconds which is still far better than most UK storms.

 

No doubt that both late on the 1st July 2015 and early on the 4th July 2015 will go down as two of my more successful and productive storm chases. 

 

Quite geeky this but I do actually give all the storm chasers I go on a rating dependent on various different factors such as lightning frequency/intensity, thunder, rate of rainfall, winds, hail, clouds, funnel/tornadoes, flooding etc... both these storms fall in my top 20 from around 100 chases - so not bad going

 

An interesting thing about last nights storm for me is that there were different colours of lightning from orange to pink to white to blue/purple and even some greenish tinted flashes.

I noticed that as well Supacell.I was watching 2 storms at around 2.15am.The one to my East had beautiful pink lightning,and the one to my west electric blue!!.Lovely to watch.

[pad199207]

Very very jealous of what England had last night. Perhaps a bite of the cherry tomorrow

[Mapantz]

The West Midlands always seems to miss storms though.

I was just going over some replies to my posts that I may have missed, and saw your one..

Then I looked at your signature.

[poseidon]

Paul S

 

Bumped into your mate Pete Scott at Stansted last night, he showed me a nice spot (thanks again, Pete) for shooting CG's against the ATC tower - nothing hit to our disappointment   Still, nice to blow the dust off the camera and see some UK lightning.

 

Not the best pic (but best of the night), I'm a bit rusty this year...

 

Dan, can you send me the location - great spot.

[Mokidugway]

Abit behind the curve , what where those disgusting images about ??.

[Robbie Garrett]

Unfortunately am too young to recall the dates of mental MCS' in the 90s and early 00s. Something like 1st August 1999, a massive 4 hour MCS turned fear to fascination. That night will forever stay with me.

 

It would be pretty amazing if we get one of those this Summer I remember them well!!!

[howham]

Thunder here now.

[Methuselah]

I do, in a way, agree with The Shermanator:

 

There were indeed some magnificent plume-events in the late 1970s and early '80s. One I recall (August 1980, I think) featured incessant thunder, lightning and torrential rain, and lasted for some 8 hours! It also dumped around 3" of rain...It also followed a mere ONE cloudy and extremely humid day...

[The PIT]

Decent storm here, gave out loads of flashes and some loud thunder. Not the best by any means but its the first at night for a long time so i cant complain.

For once it survived it's journey here as well. Some flooding lower down made worse by the lack of Council drain clearing. Started here 02:45 and stopped by 04:00 which is the longest storm for a very long time. No hail or gusty winds though.

[Flash bang flash bang etc]

Sorry if you lucked out last night Paul but your comments really are IMBY. I have never witnessed such spectacular lightning as yesterday evening's Bournemouth storm, including the 80s and 90s plume events for THIS region. What we didn't have yesterday was the back building that I've experienced in previous plume events but the lighting last night; well it was unquestionably 10/10 in Bournemouth.

Seems to me from reading reports from Bournemouth that the nature of your storm differed slightly from those in North London. I got stuck right under the cell moving up into NE london and while the strike rate was high the sheer size of the cloud base around me made it difficult to find a point where you were guaranteed to see something (and most of the lightning was sheet) - as well as constant heavy rain meaning nearly all my footage was through the van window - so IMHO it wasn't one of the more photogenic storms I have seen. Over in Bournemouth the cell seemed more discrete so the lightning looked a bit more concentrated and this may have made it a better storm to witness.

[Bolt from the Blue]

Just to Recap what areas were affected by thunderstorms during this plume over the past 4 days! Hopefully more events like this to come!   

[Richard Taylor]

That's a great image! Shows you many people have scored this week. If you missed you were very unlucky. 

[Karl83]

So there we go folks.

So glad I made the decision to drive to Swindon to meet and greet the storm. I think if I had left 30 minutes earlier I would have been able to continue chasing but it was already passing north as I arrived. I will just add that as a lesson learned in storm chasing.

Great lightshow on the motorway though and this only makes me want to hop over to Europe to chase even more!

Wonder if we'll see anything like this again this year? Who knows. I for one, will chase again! I've got the bug.

Have a good day all.

[Summer Sun]

Just spotted this on facebook taken at Blackpool overnight

 

Edited July 4, 2015 by Summer Sun

[IanR]

That's a great image! Shows you many people have scored this week. If you missed you were very unlucky. 

and where the usual shields fend off them off lol

[summer fun]

Just spotted this on facebook taken at Blackpool overnight

 

It's a great photo

The storm wasn't too bad either not as good as Wednesday's but this one was much more photogenic due to it being in the Irish see so we had very little in the way of rain...

I tried to take some but my efforts don't come anywhere near lol

[alijoy60]

Although we missed any prolonged storm last night, I did see some very nice lightning. As others have said, pink, purple and at times, greenish lightning.

I recall a huge storm to hit Southport in late May/early June 1983. I was in hospital at the time, on the ante natal ward expecting my first son, with severe pre eclampsia. (I was in for a long time). The windows were very tall and high so we couldn't really see out of them.The Lightning was silently flashing almost constantly, but little Thunder, from about 8.30 pm. It was scary.

Then a huge storm hit about 11pm with golf ball sized hail. I think the storm lasted about an hour. The midwives brought some hail in to show us!

Shortly after it had passed the doorbell for admissions kept going (it was only a small cottage hospital) as women were going into labour. 2 ladies on the 8 bed ward also started off, with waters breaking. The midwives said it was common after a storm and they thought it was to do with atmospheric pressures.

Clearly, never forgotten......

Edited July 4, 2015 by alijoy60