Just had 3hrs + of thunder and lightning. Best I've seen in years. Not often we are in the sweet spot but we were tonight 👌👌⛈️⛈️⛈️

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Just look at the size of that thunderstorm area!! Lightning currently from NW Scotland, SE to Glasgow, Carlisle, Manchester and The Midlands....incredible!!

Absolutely nothing for here in Edinburgh though as per usual.😡

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Just look at the size of that thunderstorm area!! Lightning currently from NW Scotland, SE to Glasgow, Carlisle, Manchester and The Midlands....incredible!!

Yes, indeed, it was incredible.

And yet, most of it died out during the night leaving only sporadic, mostly light rain, chiefly in the far north. Other areas (esp further south) had some clear spells. Some of these widespread thunderstorms would keep on going all night, peaking at midnight.

I suspect these storms where formed by direct surface convection (i.e, Cb from Cu con clouds), convecting violently when it reached medium level heights where patchy Ac cas clouds would have occurred, but have not maintained significant instability at this height in the night.

In Lowestoft, I have seen Cb clouds developing straight from Ac cas in the last 30 years, whilst the lower layers were very stable; some of these became spectacular nighttime thunderstorms.

 

Some heavy thundery showers around Shetland Islands a little earlier today. Of course, there's no radar coverage of the Shetlands on the Met Office site.

A few rumbles on and off all evening and feels muggy as hell. 

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An unexpected lively shower passing over just now - peaked at 36mm/hour rainfall rate. Neither GFS nor MetO foresaw that one, with the latter saying "Cloudier in the east, especially along the Kent coast, with perhaps the odd spot of light rain."

It's proper convective rain too, the sort that has massive raindrops which make large wet circles when they land...

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An unexpected lively shower passing over just now - peaked at 36mm/hour rainfall rate. Neither GFS nor MetO foresaw that one, with the latter saying "Cloudier in the east, especially along the Kent coast, with perhaps the odd spot of light rain."

It's proper convective rain too, the sort that has massive raindrops which make large wet circles when they land...

Love that sort of rain. Impressive rain rate there to, Retron, though anything above 100mm/hour is something that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Late summer and throughout Autumn best time to see rates on that scale, for here at least. 

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Some thunderstorms around, one over the Cotentin peninsular heading N, another just South of Jersey.

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Dull, forboding look over Sheffield at the moment with yellowish skies and strongly convective clouds, i.e, Cu con clouds (and relatively high cloud bases of over 1000 m). Would not be surprised to get a thunderstorm in the next few hours.