I can only speak for this area as you are going to get local variations as always when it comes to the weather, but my observations and feelings, the number of days with thunder have definitely declined in the last few years especially since and including 2010.

That is what I posted in June 2015, I didn't hear my first thunderclap of that year until the 1st of July.

In 2022, I didn't hear my first thunderclap of that year until the 7th September.

I really do feel as though thunder and thunderstorms have been declining ever since around 2010.

I checked with TORRO who do an annual thunderstorm analysis every year on some figures

http://www.torro.org.uk/pdf/torro_ann_rev_webb2024.pdf 

A quote from the overview

"Annual ‘thunder heard’ day totals in 2024 were mostly below average, maintaining the recent trend  for ‘quiet’ years over the UK and Ireland."

These are the figures for Wokingham

1981-2010 average is 16 days

2016: 14 (-2)

2017: 9 (-7)

2018: 7 (-9)

2019: 11 (-5)

2020: 10 (-6)

2021: 8  (-8)

2022: 9  (-7)

2023: 10 (-6)

2024: 12 (-4)

Every year from 2016-24   has been below the 1981-2010 average.

In the 1990s, I can recall some great periods of thunder activity.    In July 1995, I recall having two thunderstorms on the same day, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. Even at the start of August 1995 and the great summer spell, a small thunderstorm trundled across over at midnight.

Both June 1990 and 1991, I had three thunderstorms on one day. 

In early September 1987, every shower that came across seemed to be electrified. 

These days, it seems if you get a thunderstorm, "thank your lucky stars" because you are not going to get another one.

Mid June 2020 has been the closest in recent years to something akin to the 1990s. around here   I even got a supercell one evening.  

Since about early August 2021, it seems to have got even worse. As I mentioned, I didn't hear the first thunderclap of 2022 until 7th September.  

Even when the parameters are really  favorable for thunderstorm development, the odds are it will be a bust.

Does anyone feel the same?   

Nicosisa now getting more storms than before and there some currently happening today so why those posters now chasing for light rain and showers?  i never thought of seeing this as many in here or there love snow and thundrstorms, not light rain or boring rain showers.

To end the drought here we should be chasing for thunderstorms that give recordable rain and other countries does that after long dry spells, never come to end under light rain, it really extremely stupid to happen.

As I posted in heatwave thread that the way of the heat coming to the UK is in a wrong path that prevent thunderstorms forming.  First the heat start building over west, I mean WEST not Kent and SE then it transferred to the East as a weak dying heat so that exited without a storm.  If we do get back to the past like before it the heat must enter via Kent first to spread other areas to the north, the storms will start coming up from the south to move north, then the heat faded away everywhere same time.  I used to see on the old BBC maps of the red heat or cold blue enter Kent first then spread out.

I do remember as a child it being very different with imports coming in al the time on a hot muggy day would often end in a good Thunderstorm.

Certainly here the same. They lose their mojo as they cross the Channel. Or there is a deflector up above.  The Portland Deflector.  TBH I can't remember the last proper thunderstorm here. There have been some feeble affairs this year but no more than that.  I'm sure Northern France is conssiderly wetter than here and the Channel islands.

Looking back at recent years in Evesham - days of thunder with date first heard in brackets:

2021:  6  (10th May)

2022:  5  (8th June)

2023:  14  (6th April)

2024:  6  (5th May)

2025:  6  (22nd March)

2026:  4  (15th April)

(There may have been other occasioons when distant thunder was audible - but I didn't hear it myself)

2023 was a clear outlier.    I suppose I should realistically expect 1 or 2 more days of thunder this year.

Very much my impression, too, over the last twenty years - and I don't think my moving to Sussex from Kent has materially affected the frequency of experience of thunderstorms.

We're also missing out on the traditional synoptics at the end of a heat wave, when an active cold front would sweep in from the west or even southwest, and pile up the hot air in the plume ahead of it to create deep cumulonimbus.

http://www.torro.org.uk/pdf/torro_ann_rev_webb2025.pdf 

Wokingham's figures are quite stark from the TORRO reports

1981-2010 average is 16 days

2016: 14

2017: 9

2018: 7

2019: 11

2020: 10

2021: 8

2022: 9

2023: 10

2024: 12

2025: 6

Every year on the above list has been below the 1981-2010 average.

If we are in 1996 with today conditions I am sure we would have thunderstorms last night giving ue 25-50mm of rain, but sadly none just a dampness and not recordable while many posters which gone weirdly excited with poxy light rain last night?  I was more excited reading the latest storms unfold in Nicosia yesterday which one area got 62mm where I used to live.  My highest rainfall recorded during my life in Epsom was 78mm in 3 hours from a stationary storm over my area.  MIss the past storms as it used to be around 10 per year which for summer months, not including Spring or other seasons which April used to deliver too during April showers.

My sense is that what we have less of is primarily those high based Spanish plumes, and thundery showers under Northerly airmasses.

For the Spanish plumes, it’s genuinely perplexing. There’s still huge thundery activity on the near continent and up Western France in the more unsettled years (though not in drought years like 2026). So the source region doesn’t seem to have lost thunder. Are prevailing winds steering these more Eastwards than before? Or is it that the colder airmasses to the North and West which might serve to pep up a moving storm mass are not as cool, so convection can more easily die down over the channel?

For northerlies is it perhaps a similar issue: warmer source airmass than before, so less intense in situ convection? We’d need to look at data from sondes to see if thats the case. 

I'm just curious to know whether there were any 10 year or so periods during 1981 - 2010 that fell below the average? Is the average boosted by a number of years with a large number of storms or was the number fairly evenly distributed?

Definetely noticing a similar decline here as well, and all the more so during the winter. Those roaring Altantic bangers seem to be all but a thing of the past now. 

When was the last month that could be  determined "thundery" for England as a whole?

August 2004 was a thundery month, surely that can't have been the last occasion?

Thunder is just a by-product of rapid air expansion caused by lightning so the same observation could just as easily have remarked on the reduction of lightning days.

Lightning itself is caused by the charge transfer inside clouds as water droplets or ice crystals brush against each other during convective circulation inside the cloud resulting in a huge charge separation between the top and bottom of the cloud until it becomes so big that there is a discharge between the two (seen as lightning)

The formation of water droplets is initiated by particulates in the atmosphere which act as a nucleus to start the seeding into droplets so it occurred to me that with the cleaner air the UK has experienced over the last 20-30 years there is less particulate matter to initiate the seeding to droplets and hence charge separation in cumulonimbus clouds hence less thunder and lightning

I have no idea whether this theory holds water (excuse pun !) but it was what went through my mind when I read the thread

Like this today and yesterday so called break down that didn't deliver thunderstorms then sunny weather but cooler temps, what we got is unforecasted 2 days dirty clouds, humid and non recordable rain drops.  why so extensive clouds just for few drops which made me very annoyed.  I rather have lot of sunshine and thunderstorms like what Nicosia got yesterday.   The drought continue and the no thunderstorms continue.