Swarms of funnel clouds and flying ants in the skies of the UK sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but Friday saw sightings of both and we could see more funnels and flying ants over the weekend, the latter could even land on Wimbledon for the tennis finals this weekend and Wembley for the Euro 2020 finals tomorrow evening and pester anyone else outdoors.
Friday saw numerous reports and photos on social media of funnel clouds across eastern England. Sightings of funnel clouds were quite wide-ranging, seen in Scotch Corner and Darlington in County Durham, twin funnels documented in Cambridgeshire funnels seen in Bungay in Suffolk and also in North Kent too.
Funnel cloud in Newton Aycliffe, uploaded by Cakie to the Netweather Community.
There was even video footage of a waterspout over a lake, apparently near Elsworth in Cambridgeshire.
There were funnel cloud spottings on Thursday over Lincolnshire and parts of East Anglia too.
Funnel clouds are a smooth cone-shaped cloud which extends from the base of cloud towards the ground without touching the surface, they are normally associated with convective towering cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds which produce heavy showers and thunderstorms.
The last few days have seen the ideal conditions for funnel clouds to form, with a slack pressure pattern, light winds higher up in the atmosphere while surface breezes from different directions were meeting along convergence zones. These convergence zones formed from sea breezes moving inland and meeting the light synoptic flow moving towards the coast. The moist air at the surface present over recent days is forced up along these convergence zones and sometimes begins to rotate due to the opposing winds along the convergence stretching the updrafts and making it rotate to form a funnel cloud. Sometimes these funnel clouds reach the ground to form a tornado or a waterspout (as seen in Cambridgeshire yesterday. Because of the light winds aloft, any tornado or waterspout would be weak and short-lived. Stronger tornadoes usually form under strong thunderstorms with strong wind shear and need stronger winds aloft.
More funnel clouds or even brief / weak tornadoes or waterspouts may form again today and tomorrow beneath shower clouds or thunderstorms forecast to develop from the Midlands and mid-Wales northwards today, particularly northern England. Again, a slack pressure pattern with surface breeze convergence zones setting up between sea breezes and flow inland moving towards the coast and light winds aloft will create ideal conditions for them.
On to the flying ants and we could see these over the weekend too, especially in the south, these unwelcome visitors could potentially land on spectators and players at Wimbledon over the weekend and also Wembley for the Euro 2020 England vs Italy final on Sunday too.
Netweather radar at noon on Friday showed what is apparently millions of ants swarming London and the Home Counties
We saw likely evidence of this on Friday from the rainfall radar, with light rainfall returns at lunchtime over London and surrounding Home Counties not actually drizzle, which I can attest to living in south London which was bright with convective cloud building at the time, but million of flying ants being picked up by the radar.
Weather turns out to be an absolutely critical factor in triggering ants to fly. By comparing records of flying ants with the nearest weather station data, we were able to untangle some of the factors that trigger ants to take to the sky.
Ants only flew when the temperature was above 13C and when the wind speed was less than 6.3 metres per second but overall ants like it calm and warm. During the course of the study, every day in the UK summer that had a mean temperature above 25C had ants flying somewhere.
Royal Society of Biology
Again, like the funnel clouds, conditions were ideal, with calm conditions but also quite muggy and warm. These conditions look to be replicated again this weekend over London and the southeast, particularly later this afternoon once morning rain clears and through much of Sunday – which will be dry, warm and sunny with light winds.
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