Stormy Weather II

[Serial_Apologist]

Nowt down south! Just a shot today as yesterday! When, oh when, please....

Should be back to normal temperatures by Saturday, but with rain and still some thunder in the forecast. Very humid this morning, folliowing a short burst of heavy rain at around 7 am. That rain area developed into quite a large MCS as it moved up to affect a large swathe of Hertfordshire around breakfasttime before moving further north to where it now lies, across the E Midlands roughly between Leicester and Peterborough. It seems that the areas affected by storms are more limited in scale than yesterday, though kicking off earlier, now that we are in the middle of the low which had been slow-moving over N France for the past few days; so we'll have to wait and see what transpires: will we have to have our residents' association meeting under the covered stairway outside my flat this evening, as one of the residents has proposed? Apparently it's still not allowed to gather inside someone's home.

[Serial_Apologist]

A long broken line of thunderstorms, some of which are quite big, is now firing off from the Blackdowns in Somerset to the North Downs in Kent, just managing to touch the M25 along the southern flank. Not sure if these developed in situ or crossed BBM's area in the last 2 hours. I rather imagine the shapeless, woolly-looking cloud masses to my south mark the foothills to these storms, since there's only broken altocumulus to the north, but it's hard to tell in today's hazy visibility. The temperature needs to be a couple of degrees higher for surface-based convection to take off here, which must mean it's hottest across the Greensand ridges right now, which would make sense.

I think I'll go and snatch a bit of much-needed sleep before it all kicks off, as I expect, in a couple of hours here.

Edit: Too late! thunder has reached Sutton - audible here!

[DracoM]

What is puzzling me is that winds up here are resolute EASTERLIES. Odd for us up here at this time of year. Threats of thunder all a.m., now is a glorious, fine, breezy summer's day.

[Serial_Apologist]

What is puzzling me is that winds up here are resolute EASTERLIES. Odd for us up here at this time of year. Threats of thunder all a.m., now is a glorious, fine, breezy summer's day.

Well the storm here is also behaving most oddly! An hour and a half ago it reached Croydon, 4 miles south of here, and became so dark it required lights on indoors. While it still looks very dark out to the west, there have only been a couple of spherics out Weybridge way, and one over Harrow, suggesting very slow north-northwestward movement, but at a snail's pace. The fact that the air temperature here fell from 28 C to 22 C may be having something to do with this, as I hinted above - a cooler inflow from the east (off the North Sea) draining the storm's energy away, and acting as a brake. Thundery weather can be very erratic and hard to predict in detail, however, so this might not be the end of the story for today.

[LHC]

Although the temperature today is better (27 rather than 34), if anything the humidity has increased, making it still very uncomfortable. The promised rain and thunderstorms have disappeared without trace, and its looking increasingly unlikely we'll get any rain today or tomorrow.

[oddoneout]

What a difference a day makes! Struggled to reach 20 today(cf 33 yesterday), largely because the sun didn't get out, and a noticeable northerly breeze made things verge on chilly.

[DracoM]

Walk in the easterly up here, and just been thinking we'd be frozen and perished if it was this surprising strength two months ago. Brr.!

[LMcD]

A few flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder around bedtime yesterday, but no rain. Decision to water garden yesterday evening triumphantly vindicated.
A few drops so far this morning. 19°C, cloud thinning.

[DracoM]

Fine a.m., some cloud but mostly sun and boisterous easterly.

[cloughie]

Dull!

[Serial_Apologist]

With temperatures now dropped to near normals for mid-August, it almost feels cool out there today. A return to nondescript grey clag-laden skies again. Still too warm indoors despite all my efforts to ventilate the place.

[BBMmk2]

With temperatures now dropped to near normals for mid-August, it almost feels cool out there today. A return to nondescript grey clag-laden skies again. Still too warm indoors despite all my efforts to ventilate the place.

Great to have that drop of a downpour yesterday afternoon. Much better temperature to cope than the last few days. Blimey!

[oddoneout]

An incredibly thick mist for most of the night( I didn't sleep well for various reasons...), which looked rather sinister as the trees part way down the back gardens got absorbed into a lumpy blackness, and differentiation of sky and horizon was absent. It can't have been easy for anyone driving. A murky start to the day as the sun's appearance was slow and continues intermittent which is keeping the temperature down. There were a few wet spots at about 10 am which just served to make surfaces streaky as they hit the dust, but no rain - and none likely frankly in my opinion, despite the forecast saying "continuing threat of thunderstorms". There might be clouds and some noise/lights, but action is likely to be absent hereabouts I reckon.

[Serial_Apologist]

An incredibly thick mist for most of the night( I didn't sleep well for various reasons...), which looked rather sinister as the trees part way down the back gardens got absorbed into a lumpy blackness, and differentiation of sky and horizon was absent. It can't have been easy for anyone driving. A murky start to the day as the sun's appearance was slow and continues intermittent which is keeping the temperature down. There were a few wet spots at about 10 am which just served to make surfaces streaky as they hit the dust, but no rain - and none likely frankly in my opinion, despite the forecast saying "continuing threat of thunderstorms". There might be clouds and some noise/lights, but action is likely to be absent hereabouts I reckon.

Hit-and-miss, really; and very difficult for the amateur forecaster to predict, given that the storms are coming in from the east on an elevated layer of convection de-coupled from the lower stratus and stratocumulus, borne on nearer to surface northerlies. The only warning might be a sudden onset of gloom. Another trait of the recent hot weather experienced in some areas has been exceptionally high dewpoint temperatures causing fog to form at as high as 20/21 C in the super-satured air following rain - the sort of thing one sees in nature programmes set in equatorial jungle areas of the world.

[BBMmk2]

In the midst of settling in my new home, it’s good that the weather has cooled down at last! MrsBBM has been a trooper!