What are the worst thunderstorms you have experienced in the UK?

[C Beaven]

The most notable thunderstorm I had ever experienced occurred on the 12th July 1982 when I was at school in Yeovil in Somerset.  There had been severe overnight thunderstorms early on that Monday morning but another one had rolled in and by 10: 30am and it was like the middle of the night and all the street lights have come on. I still remember that storm to this day because there were approximately 100 lightning strikes every minute which had gone for about two-and-a-half hours before the storm had cleared away. The heavy rain that had accompanied it was like standing under a waterfall but was reminiscent of a similar storm the year earlier on 6th August 1981 where one had struck the centre of London and had turn daylight into night. I also recall that same year that there was another really violent  thunderstorm on 2nd June 1982 which had struck just to west of London where we had got caught up in after coming back from Spain via Luton airport. Having said that, a few days earlier when I was in Spain I had seen his violent thunderstorms but never thought that we would see them as vicious as they were in the United Kingdom have a few days later.

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

11th / 12th August 2020 will take a long long time to be beaten here if it ever is, everyone here agrees it is the worst storms we have ever seen, there was a storm nearby early in the day but from around 7pm - 7am yes 12 hours! Of non stop storms, severe flooding and it was declared a major incident 

 

the rest of the storms from that day can be found on my YouTube channel. ? 

[Jbeesfan]

On 09/06/2018 at 18:05, TomSE12 said:

Some of you that have read my posts before, will know that I have suffered quite severely from Brontophobia, from a young age and I'm now, sixty-two.

 

Two storms that stand out in my mind, are as follows:

Firstly, a tremendous thunderstorm occurred, in the first ten days or so of June 1966.

I can remember having a P.E. Lesson during the late morning, before the t/storm, during the overnight period. During the P.E. Lesson, there was a brief, light shower of very warm rain and the humidity, was intense. Can vividly recall playing football in the local park that evening and gazing at some very strange cloud formations. Can remember thinking that they looked like giant bears, in the sky.

The monumental storm broke over my home, in Bromley, Kent, at the time, around midnight and continued until around 6 am, without a word of a lie. The lightning was very scary and thunder deafening.

My mother was in hospital, giving birth to my younger sister and had been quite ill. I was in the care of my father, who was half-German and was a strict disciplinarian and had no sympathy, for his ten year old son, who was scared out of his wits!!. He wouldn't close the windows or curtains, or put the bedroom light on. I would loved to have seen the radar returns, from that night. Having learnt more about the nature of storms, feel sure we were visited by an M.C.S, that night, over S.E.London/ N.W.Kent Indeed the local newspaper, the Bromley and Kentish Times of the following week, ran with the headline that two t/storms had merged over the Bromley area.

For years I had blamed my father, for my Brontophobia but more recently, have more recently come round to thinking that my Italian mother, had implanted the fear in me. Mum, on seeing a flash of lightning, would make the sign of the cross and invoke, Santa Barbara. Unwittingly, Mum had implanted that fear in me. As some of you are no doubt aware, Italians are a very superstitious, nationality. Santa Barbara is the Patron Saint of lightning, thunder and storms in general, in Italy. When I saw my mother take this course of action, when she saw a flash of lightning, subsequently I thought lightning and thunder was a very bad thing and something to be feared of,hence my Phobia was born. 

 

6th AUGUST 1981

 

Another notable thundery event I experienced, occurred on the morning/midday of the 6th August 1981.

Myself and my wife were house-sitting for a husband/wife couple, in North London. The husband was a groundsman at Alleyns school, in North Dulwich.

I can remember making the half hour walk to work, at Lordship Lane East Dulwich, around 9 that morning, with peals of thunder and very threatening, orangey-looking skies, chasing me on my way. When I arrived at work, all hell broke loose!!

I normally had to unlock the metal gates, at the back of the Office but a kind colleague, knowing of my Phobia, thankfully unlocked them for me. The lightning, thunder and incredible rainfall, were pretty scary!!

The t/storm then moved away but the thunder was finished with us yet!!

Just before midday, the sky grew very dark but nothing happened for a while. It made for a very eerie, atmosphere. Then as if a switch had been thrown, all hell broke loose, again!! Very intense lightning, shotgun thunder and "biblical-type", rainfall. This was the famous, "day to night" event, in the London area. Ian Currie's Surrey County Weather Book, has a superb photo, taken at Purley, just south of Croydon, depicting just how dark it became, during this thundery event. My wife phoned me at work to report that the sports ground, we were "keeping an eye on", was fully under water, especially the cricket square!! 

Those Brontophiles amongst you, who are to young to have experienced these exceptional thundery events, would have been in "seventh heaven", believe me.

As some of you know, I experienced a Brain Haemorrhage in September 2015 and after my "close shave" with death, thankfully my Brontophobia, has eased somewhat, helping me to put lightning/thunder, into more perspective now!! Gone are the days of putting pillows over my head, cotton wool in my ears and shutting myself in a window less room and having tv and radio, fully turned up to mask the sound of thunder and intense rainfall!! Still can't stay in the top level of the house, bedroom, etc, as was the case, a few Saturdays ago. I still have the need to put all the lights on in the house and I'm still not brave enough, to venture out in thunder, yet.

 

Regards,

 

Tom.  

 

 

[Jbeesfan]

The monumental storm broke over my home, in Bromley, Kent, at the time, around midnight and continued until around 6 am, without a word of a lie. The lightning was very scary and thunder deafening.
 

i remember that storm.i was three years old at the time and lived in Clapham North. My parents took me out of the cot i still slept in and i was sitting on the edge of their bed, watching my mother pacing  up and down, chain smoking because she was terrified of thunderstorms. 
My fear of storms must’ve dated from this point. I don’t remember being scared before. But, there was a slash of lightning and and a huge crash, which sent me under the covers of my parents bed, much to my father’s amusement. The next thing i remember was someone hammering on our window - the lightning had struck a tree at the bottom of the garden which backed onto the railway line, and a family of young boys who knew my brother came tearing down to us for a better look! It didn’t really finish until it got light.

i was terrified of storms from that point. I can’t say when the turning point for me was. I was ok in groups of people - i remember seeing a lightning ball from my classroom window in primary school and thinking, i can’t scream because no-one else has!

The 1981 storm i remember well. By then i was 18. My mother and i were at home (by now we’d moved to West London). I’d lost my fear of thunderstorms by then, my mother hadn’t and was just a pair of skinny legs poking out from underneath the coats in the hall. But i do remember feeling uneasy enough to sit on the stairs.

Probably the worst storm i remember in the UK was either the 27th or 28th August 1990, stuck on York Station for five and a half hours because the pantagraph was down at Doncaster.

i saw a real beauty in Rüdesheim in Germany on a boat trip up the Rhein in around August 2005. We were steaming past Bingen when a storm of Wagnerian proportion took place. The lightning danced from the golden balls atop the churches. The boat captain must've had a flair for the dramatic because he played the Lorelei over the loudspeaker and a couple of Americans were arguing about what would happen if the boat was hit. It was unforgettable.

And being me, it was probably unwise..I’ve been in two separate houses hit by lightning, plus a building in Covent Garden (whilst using a switchboard) also struck in a plane. I’ve seen not just one lightning ball but two. Yesterday we had a bit of a bash, there was one colossal bang and flash and the garages at the back of our garden was hit. Under my breath i said ‘missed’.  

 

 

 

[Cheshire Freeze]

Not the most intense storm in terms of rainfall but certainly the most prolific storm electrically I’ve witnessed in my lifetime, last August will be etched in my memory for a while.

[Weather-history]

23 minutes ago, CreweCold said:

Not the most intense storm in terms of rainfall but certainly the most prolific storm electrically I’ve witnessed in my lifetime, last August will be etched in my memory for a while.

Wasn't a lot of thunder neither. It was a strange quiet storm

 

[Cheshire Freeze]

On 01/08/2021 at 05:57, Weather-history said:

Wasn't a lot of thunder neither. It was a strange quiet storm

 

Yeah. Though there was a couple of very loud CG strikes, the type that shake the window panes. 
 

A complete tropical strobe light show, it was amazing.

[Sunny76]

On 16/08/2020 at 23:50, C Beaven said:

The most notable thunderstorm I had ever experienced occurred on the 12th July 1982 when I was at school in Yeovil in Somerset.  There had been severe overnight thunderstorms early on that Monday morning but another one had rolled in and by 10: 30am and it was like the middle of the night and all the street lights have come on. I still remember that storm to this day because there were approximately 100 lightning strikes every minute which had gone for about two-and-a-half hours before the storm had cleared away. The heavy rain that had accompanied it was like standing under a waterfall but was reminiscent of a similar storm the year earlier on 6th August 1981 where one had struck the centre of London and had turn daylight into night. I also recall that same year that there was another really violent  thunderstorm on 2nd June 1982 which had struck just to west of London where we had got caught up in after coming back from Spain via Luton airport. Having said that, a few days earlier when I was in Spain I had seen his violent thunderstorms but never thought that we would see them as vicious as they were in the United Kingdom have a few days later.

I think the atmosphere back in 1980-82 especially was much more unstable, or there was more cold air mixed in with the hot air, which probably contributed to those very dark thunderstorms.

We don’t seem to get them anymore, but I still have faith we could get one at some point. The Spanish plumes seem to be what’s needed to produce them. 
 

I also remember an overnight storm in august 1986, which took place in the early hours of the Monday morning. A storm was moving away, then another one was approaching within an hour.

Does anyone remember the storms of early 1986? It was a poor august, but I think there must have been a humid thundery spell early on. 

[cheeky_monkey]

On 01/08/2021 at 06:00, Sunny76 said:

I think the atmosphere back in 1980-82 especially was much more unstable, or there was more cold air mixed in with the hot air, which probably contributed to those very dark thunderstorms.

summer 1982 was particularly thundery had quite a few storms in June July and August ..going to go out on a limb and state this summer was the most thundery summer i have experienced in the UK

On 19/06/2018 at 10:40, philglossop said:

Around 10th July 1995 here in Plymouth. Never known a night like it, it started thundering at 2300hrs and just didn’t stop until the next morning. I remember walking around the City Centre to get lunch and most Plymouthians were all tired from the lack of sleep.

 

Never had a storm like it since.

I have never lived in Plymouth but did work there from 1995-1998..anyway i lived in a small village 3 miles west Of Exeter at quite a high elevation back then..and do remember one summer it was either 1995 or 1996 going to bed and seeing out the window a major storm going on way to the west..no thunder but lots of lightning off in the distance.. sounds like it was possibly the same storm

[Derecho]

On 01/08/2021 at 06:20, CreweCold said:

Yeah. Though there was a couple of very loud CG strikes, the type that shake the window panes. 
 

A complete tropical strobe light show, it was amazing.

Yup I remember being on night shift for that and seeing the webcam at Crewe station looking like a disco. Was impressive just from that.

Good to see this thread going a few years after I opened it! Many weather enthusiasts I know developed their interest from a memorable storm as a kid.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Quicksilver1989

[Jon Somerset]

Personally I’ve always enjoyed thunderstorms. But in the UK we haven’t really seen the extreme versions. I enjoyed a particularly good one in the Pyrenees five years ago which rumbled around for a few hours.

[al78]

Reading 1998, a supercell thunderstorm dropped torrential rain and flash flooded parts of the city and the university campus (the student's union building). Rain rates peaked at 160mm/hr just north of Reading, and a tornado caused some damage in the southern suburbs.

My father has previously told me about a severe thunderstorm that hit us (Swinton, in Salford) when I was about 5 or 6 years old, which would have been around 1984. Apparently we were both momentarily stuck in his car on the driveway because golf ball size hail was coming down. His car was full of dents.

There was one storm that was not intense, but scared me because of my vulnerable position, I was walking the Minigaig pass (Blair Atholl to Kingussie) over a weekend. I had arrived early in the morning on the sleeper in dreich weather, which improved through the morning eventually becoming warm and sunny as I was heading up glen Bruar. I reached the head of the glen and heard thunder and could just see deep convection on the plateau ahead, so waited it out until I thought it had passed, at which point I climbed up and out of the glen onto the high plateau which rises to a bit over 800m. Unfortunately the storms hadn't finished and when I was on the nice open elevated plateau with no shelter and like a sore thumb sticking up, the thunder and lightning started again in front of me, then a bolt hit the ground near the top of the pass a little over a mile ahead of me. I quickly got to the locally lowest point I could see, got the tent up and sat inside to shelter from the rain praying that I wouldn't get hit by lightning. After about 40 minutes and having not got hit by lightning, the storms had either moved on or dissipated and I was able to carry on with my journey.

[SummerShower]

34 minutes ago, al78 said:

Reading 1998, a supercell thunderstorm dropped torrential rain and flash flooded parts of the city and the university campus (the student's union building). Rain rates peaked at 160mm/hr just north of Reading, and a tornado caused some damage in the southern suburbs.

Was this on a Saturday, late pm in June 1998?

 I remember a violent storm here on 27th which produced the largest hailstones I've ever seen, they were bouncing up over the fence panels and causing an absolute racket at the same time.  Even so, the thunder was still loud enough to be heard over this

Also, 3rd July 1999 had a very intense overnight storm here, but this was hen beaten by 15/16 September 2016

[al78]

2 hours ago, SummerShower said:

Was this on a Saturday, late pm in June 1998?

 I remember a violent storm here on 27th which produced the largest hailstones I've ever seen, they were bouncing up over the fence panels and causing an absolute racket at the same time.  Even so, the thunder was still loud enough to be heard over this

Also, 3rd July 1999 had a very intense overnight storm here, but this was hen beaten by 15/16 September 2016

I can't remember the day and date, I only remember the event itself, it was some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen. The university Met station recorded about 20 mm of rain in 15 minutes.