Thunderstorm potential

[Ohyoubadbadkitten]

Quick heads up, will try to elaborate later, but today is a bit bonkers. Looks like there is potential for some severe thunderstorms tonight/tomorrow. I'll be honest and say that I've not looked at this myself yet have nicked it off a very reputable forum Tomorrows potential depends on what happens tonight - how much cloud cover is left over as we need the sun to get things going.

Will try and be more specific later,

Here's the Met Office explanation for the sand: metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/dust-storm-brings-saharan-sand-to-the-uk/.

Sunny and muggy here - reading 27C, but the sebnsor id in direct sun at the moment, and 66% humidity.

No rain since the short down pour at about 11.

Dh works 35 miles away in Lancashire, it rained very heavily this morning, for ages, then again this afternoon.

Convective storms with frontal lifting huggly :) we had warm moist air overnight iand then a surface cold front overtook the warm air. Cold air 'pushes' the warm air up. Then what really got things going was the jet stream introducing a good wind shear element resulting in a rather unstable atmosphere.

synoptic charts look at today's t+0 and t+ 12 you can see the warm front and the trough ahead of the cold front.

We had sand here too from the early hours rain. Very odd to be standing outside at dark o'clock in a light weight jumper and big blobs of rain. Car could rather do with a clean.

Just saw a home video clip of the rain on bbc24 I can't remember ever seeing anything like it.

sad news about someone dying plus some on the travel issues. Not convinced about the description of the storm movements though!

east and west coast railway lines blocked

Gateshead utterly paralysed according to bbc too because of severe flooding.

28000 customers power is disrupted in the NE too.

So many impacts of these storms.

It looked like a potent situation this time yesterday, but i would never have predicted such a severe outcome.

I'm in the Midlands and it was apocalyptic earlier The thunder was incessant for at least half an hour, then a ton of fork lightning- it got so dark the street lights came on. Then the rain, oh the rain... In 30 seconds I went from "I'm not running for anything, I'll just have to get wet" (30wks pg, SPD, top speed a slow waddle everywhere) to "Holy fuck, I'm going to drown where I stand unless I hustle" and actually RAN to the pub 50 feet away. My pelvis now feels like a piano that's been dropped out a window. And I was drenched to the skin anyway!
Anyway, it stopped raining ten minutes before the Olympic torch came through town and the sun came out about with two minutes to spare :)

OYBBK what does tomorrow look like in the midlands, any idea?

You know, when people describe the weather as apocalyptic I usually take it with a pinch of salt but watching video clips I don't think that is an exaggeration at all. I've just read of someone measuring 56 mm of rain mostly in two 10 minute bursts. That is staggering.

Peerie, I hope you are ok this evening. Take care of yourself.

Loopy perhaps some showers. Much cooler than today. Nothing like today!

apparently, having checked with mums at school, there was hail in the big black cloud out to the west of the city, over quite a wide area(2 mums 2 locations)

Thanks, OYBBK - now that you've pointed to the synoptic charts I can kind of see what was going on.

I think one of the problems, at least for me, in understanding how weather happens is that the weather is in 3-D whereas most of what is presented is in 2-D. I have a DVD-based set of meteorology lectures which I should re-watch. But they're produced by a USA company, so focus on the weather patterns there, and it's sometimes difficult to translate those to the kind of weather we have here. It would be really good if the MetOffice would do something similar, but that would be expensive. But it might help people to understand how these atrocious conditions came about and how impossible it was to prevent the consequent and, in some cases, devastating effects.

it was the sudden onset and the blackness inside the cafe... darker than now

It does sound awesome in the traditional sense of the word

sleaford funnel video can't confirm if this is a tornado as you can't actually see it touch the ground, but it may well be and is a jolly good funnel. I hope that those it passed over escaped without damage.

I think that the met office should have a review of their warning system (again) I'm not sure why red alerts weren't issues for NE England when it was clear that the storms heading that way were producing exceptional hail.

Oybk, I was driving very close to sleaford today and saw what looked like a tornado. The storm was terrible, very dark sky, amazing lightening in two different locations. To the right and left of where I was. The rain was so bad that the sewers were that full that big, heavy manhole covers were blown out.

Viva, that sounds awe inspiring and terrifying. Your report would be invaluable to torro if you have the time please.

jealous

Dunno how I'm still up,given my utter lack of sleep last night. Dh has vamoosed and he had a fair bit more than me. I suppose I ought to go to bed.
I hope that those who witnessed scary stuff today manage to get some real rest. Try not to fret, today was exceptional. Tomorrow looks quieter.

Just seen a photo of someone I know holding a hailstone that reaches the length of her palm (oval shaped). Must be 7cm+ I guess...

Torro are looking for verification of the hailstone size, so it would be bril if that could be sent to torro please.
Sorry to keep going on and on and on about it!

Goodnight :)

Will see what I can do.

news report this morning
A lot of schools reported to be closed.

For once, Manchester had the best of the weather I got 2 loads of washing dry on the line

OYBBK I too was wondering why no red alerts were issued for the NE as well. It might have meant companies could have let people go early and avoided the chaos yesterday. If that weather didn't warrant a red alert I'm not sure I want to see what weather would trigger one .

I'm an ex NHS major incident manager and weather alerts are useful because they give more weight to your demands for beds & resources at times of challenge.

There was a fab picture of the storm over Newcastle doing the rounds on twitter last night. It was taken from a plane landing at Teeside airport. Brilliant picture of the cloud formation and the rain.