What do you think of thunderstorms ?

[WildRosie]

In the UK, we perhaps don't see the same frequency and intensity as in continental Europe but they can still be a spectacle. As a youngster, like many children, I found the sound of thunder quite frightening and my late Mum never got over her dislike of thunderstorms. Now I'm much older and I'm not at all bothered by them but I wouldn't like to be stuck outdoors in the torrential downpours and all hell breaking loose above. From inside, you can appreciate the awesome sight and soundof Mother Nature getting arsey!

The local feral pigeons always seem to know when a storm is brewing. They suddenly take off en masse from the rooftop opposite my home and fly supersonic (or so it appears) to shelter. They are fast fliers anyway but really speed up when the shit is about to hit the fan.

If you want to see gooduns the East Kent coast from Ramsgate round to Dungeness is the best place, lots of very hot air from the continent travelling over the Channel. Generally very dry here but we do get great storms.

I used to love them as a child and once had to be shouted down from a tree I had climbed for a better view . I'm more wary now since watching a discovery channel programme about leaders rising up from objects, including humans, and also that a lightning strike can shoot miles out of a thunder cloud and strike an object nowhere near the storm. (A bolt from the blue!) Still love them but don't go out in them anymore!

I love them but it's a pity that I can sleep through them these days.

Bloody love a good storm! Feel like I can actually feel the electricity. Something exciting and magical about them.

My two most memorable TS were both in Dorset, five years apart and both at night on family holidays. I was only four the first time round and I don't remember that much about it but five years later, the TS seemed to last forever, made an awful lot of noise and flashes and also destroyed several roof tiles and the telephone in our holiday home! We were going back home the following morning and all was calm and fresh as we left, only for us to encounter more stormy weather on the motorway.

I can't comment on Kent's predilection for TS but I have heard that the East Midlands and Lincolnshire are the UK's TS hotspot.

I love a thunderstorm.

when I was a child, we went in a family holiday to Florida. We went to some island thing that’s part of Disney world one evening. Once we got to the island, the weather quickly turned and there was torrential rain and an impressive thunderstorm. We were stuck on the island til it stopped (the boat didn’t run in a storm). There wasn’t much shelter. We got soaked running through the rain back to the bit where you got the boat to shelter there.

love them - if safe inside

remember a few years ago the great lightening show in se england?
went on for hours.

love counting the seconds from lightening to thunder

Love them!

Well, I live in Florida so I don't really even think about them. They are sort of like the air we breathe. Especially this time of year. They help to cool things off, so that's good. But sometimes the electricity goes out and that's not good.

Love them. When we were in Florida a few years ago we watched several from the house we were staying in and I have never seen anything so spectacular. We don't get many here in Surrey but there was a great one earlier this year where it was right overhead.

I can predict one by headaches!

British TS are usually convectional rather than frontal, and are therefore the result of a build-up of increasingly warm and humid air over a period of days. So good when the storm breaks, knocks the temperature down a few degrees and clears away the humidity. Nature's atmospheric reset!

If this heatwave comes along as promised, we could well see some TS before long.

They're great and tend to freshen up the atmosphere

I remember it well. DD's year were camping out of the school field. Continuous lightning and thunder for nearly an hour... although dd had to be woken when they decided to evacuate the children inside.
And one child broke their arm falling over a guy rope as they were evacuated, just to add to the fun.

I was a bit surprised when they did it again the next year. 🤣🤣🤣

I love a good thunderstorm.

I have been petrified of them my entire life - like proper big phobia territory. I remember hiding under the table as a tiny child and refusing to come out because of the storm. I will not drive if I know a storm is forecast because I'm worried about getting a fright and veering off the road or into another car. (Specifically it's the lightning that scares me but as thunder and lightning generally come as a package, it amounts to the same thing.) Being outdoors or by a window when there is lightning freaks me out no end.

Was it last summer or the one before, we had the most amazing storm in the middle of the night. I've never seen anything like it and I've seen monsoon storms. It was just crack of lightning after crack of lightening. The sky was more light than dark. And it just went on and on.
Spectacular.

Absolutely love them. Rarely happen where I am now... but I once lived in Cyprus and loved October 😍

I love watching lightning , so a thunderstorm is always welcome .

Pilots go to some lengths to avoid storm clouds, mainly for the benefit of the passengers' comfort. A direct lightning strike on an aeroplane should discharge as per the Faraday's Cage principal but no reason to take chances! I remember at Manchester Airport a few years ago, a British Airways aeroplane was about thirty seconds from landing when a storm cloud burst and dumped its contents over the end of the runway, very rapidly. All of a sudden, the pilots couldn't see the runway any more so they had to abandon the landing and climb away. The flight diverted elsewhere but came back later.

Love them, and we get spectacular storms in spring and summer in the US Midwest, often accompanied by tornado warnings, though sadly some communities get more than just the warnings. Usually if a band of strong storms goes through, they cancel normal programming on local broadcast TV and do weather coverage all evening.

Absolutely love them. They make me feel "alive".

They are terrifying, luckily I live somewhere in the uk where we can go years between thunderstorms.

A few years ago though we had a big thunderstorm that started around 10pm and continued all night, finally finishing around 6am. It was horrific, constant lightning and non stop thunder there was so much rain which caused loads of flooding as the drains couldn’t cope with this continuous downpour. I got two hours sleep as I couldn’t sleep through it, unlike everyone else in my house.

We had a small thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago but it only lasted half an hour, it wasn’t to bad but I did feel very anxious that we might have a repeat of last time.

I’ve been in Florida where there was a big thunderstorm and all the lights went out, we were in a shopping mall at the time.
And the south of .France was another place we witnessed a big storm, it was the end of a very long heatwave and we could hear it approaching from far away hours before it got to us.

I love them. All the colour and energy.

As a kid I was caught out in a couple (walking the dogs on the hills) and the lighting was obviously rather terrifying. Hasn’t put me off though 😀