Tonight’s thunderstorms and Met Office warnings

[xmetman]

Tonight’s thunderstorms and Met Office warnings

The current yellow warning from the Met Office ran out at 2355 BST. Todays warning for much further north didn’t start till 0005 BST, so technically there was no warning out for around midnight. 

I would have thought that the Chief forecaster would have extended the one for Wednesday to cover the south coast, especially with SFERICS and heavy rain all along the south coast. 

There is obviously some rule that gets him out of doing this, but in the light of what happened at Coverack, you would have thought it sensible for him to do this, because the intensities in the weather radar are very similar to yesterday afternoon. What happened at Coverack could happen again anywhere along the south coast during the night.

So here in mid Devon at 0010 BST, and close to Exeter, we have a thunderstorm and heavy rain, but are outwith the warnings area for today which starts around the M4.

[Tudor Hughes]

Something of a Light Show here.  First rumbles at 1.26 a.m. increasing for about 20 min then dying out about 2.30 a.m.  Some spectacular lightning.  Minimum distance about 1½ miles to SSE. Fairly continuous rain, none of it heavy.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, NE Surrey, 557 ft, 169 m

[Paul Garvey]

Me too. I was surprised at the first rumble of thunder at 11.45ish, then we were out of bed, watching the best lightning show in 20 years! Torrential rain and almost continuous thunder for an hour, or more. Strikes at 60 per minute at worst/best. The sky was alive with light. This appears to have been repeated in many areas in the south, especially along the coast and also around Cambridge/The Wash, where a wonderful circulation appeared to be showing on the radar. The whole of that area and almost the whole of the south coast were criss-crossed with 'X's of many different colours on lightning detector sites. Many areas were showing 60+ strikes per minute. That was some night! 

I don't know if warnings were out for other areas, but the met office had no forecast of rain here and no warnings post midnight. They might regret that this morning!

[Trevor Harley]

Absolutely nothing further north in Scotland. O am very disappointed.

[George in Edinburgh]

...and I was very pleased. It's the season of football camps and much outdoor work. 32 hours of sunshine Monday and Tuesday with a Tmax of 25.1C yesterday.

George in Swanston, Edinburgh
www.swanstonweather.co.uk

[Martin Rowley [West Moors/East Dorset]]

" There is obviously some rule that gets /him/ out of doing this, but in the light of what happened at Coverack, you would have thought it sensible for /him/ to do thi ... "

You are probably correct with the statement as regards gender attribution on this occasion, but in case it's not generally known, we now have (for a couple of months now) our first Chief Forecaster where more caution is required with such statements ..... :-)

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/laura-paterson-37825561

Martin.

[John Hall]

I heard a thunderstorm in Cranleigh last night, possible the same one that Tudor experienced. I don't know what time it was, as I didn't check. I woke with a start because of a sharp crack of thunder.There was no rumbling afterwards, which I assume indicated that the lightning was very close. There were about three more very similar sharp cracks of thunder - almost a tearing noise - over the next 15 or 30 minutes, in every case without any rumbling preceding or following, which struck me as very unusual. My bedroom window faces roughly NNW, and I didn't see any bright flashes through the curtains. Either I was facing the wrong way to look at the window - I was still half asleep - or the storm must have been roughly to the south of here. I briefly heard heavy rain at some point, but there wasn't too much sign of it by the morning.

[Richard Dixon]

On Wednesday, 19 July 2017 18:57:16 UTC+1, John Hall wrote:

I heard a thunderstorm in Cranleigh last night, possible the same one that Tudor experienced. I don't know what time it was, as I didn't check. I woke with a start because of a sharp crack of thunder.There was no rumbling afterwards, which I assume indicated that the lightning was very close.

Similar in Blackheath, but must not have been much (plus I had the fan on which doused any noise) as I dropped off fairly quickly. Shame I wasn't in Whitstable: from the returns overnight they had some fun around 3am.

Mind you - as much as I like a good storm, there's no such thing as a good storm at 2am that disrupts sleep in my book...!!

Richard