The ol' AM radio is crackling away like mad (continuous), but whether the actual stuff does get here is still debatable.

What I shall call 'ponderous rain' here, on and off, large rain drops. Still remarkably warm, holding up into the 20's although only just.

Looking at the raintoday radar, the MCS is developing a vast bow-echo signiture. This is the level-3 scale event that ESTOFEX predicted.

It's clear to see how the continental heat is fuelling a line of intense thunderstorms over N France, from which there is this huge plume of convective rainfall extending out across the Channel.

isleofwightweather's lightning tracker is showing a few inter-cloud strikes close to the IOW now.

There's only one proper thunderstorm over the Channel and that's currently NE of the Brest Peninsula and tracking towards the SE of England.

From the radar situation, the centre of the shallow trough could be just south of Bayeux...? It might track a little bit west of the model projections.

<---- Slaps hands on lap. "C'mon Storm, come here, c'mon, there's a good boy".

reports on NW indicate that that cell pretty much just appeared out of nowhere.

Scattered heavy showers breaking out across parts of the East Midlands on net radar.

Very convective sky's here and very humid, 24c!

Surface and lower winds are turning easterly here as shown by the movement of lower level cloud under increasing rain. Very much what was expected wrt LP development, in this case a huge MCS with most of the sferic activity on the eastern side. Could be a very good call and the rain will be very welcome here

Even in the past half hour I've noticed a considerable change in the direction of cloud movement from N'ward to near E'ward as Dave just reported.

Rain is still rather variable here, ranging from sparse to breifly more intense. Seems I'm right on the edge of that column of precipitation moving up through Dorset. Some model ouputs have had me getting two glancing blows, first from the stuff to my west, then from the stuff to my east.

Right now that looks like it could well happen but with the exception of some small areas of particularly intense precipitation currently arriving onshore over and near to Bournemouth. One observation of lightning so far

There's some thunderstorms way to the S/SE of here with Net radar picking up a fair bit of lighting from them over parts of Northhaptonshire.

IMO it's unlikely that there will be any major thundery activity away from areas SE of a line roughly from Southamton to the Wash. The rain is far too widespread and not really very convective now on this Western end and will clear steadily away North later this evening as winds settled towards WSW. The far SE though is far more likely to see the potential for some powerful thunderstorms for a time in the coming few hours as over there the amount of forcing is far greater, closest to the hot plume, though even here things will moderate quickly overnight as the rain moves further North towards NE England and clearer fresher air feeds in from the SW.

its been a long time since ive seen a radar pic like this from south not losing any energy either at mo

Thanks Martin just told partner running around like headless chicken again

quote=GIBBY;518737]

IMO it's unlikely that there will be any major thundery activity away from areas SE of a line roughly from Southamton to the Wash. The rain is far too widespread and not really very convective now on this Western end and will clear steadily away North later this evening as winds settled towards WSW. The far SE though is far more likely to see the potential for some powerful thunderstorms for a time in the coming few hours as over there the amount of forcing is far greater, closest to the hot plume, though even here things will moderate quickly overnight as the rain moves further North towards NE England and clearer fresher air feeds in from the SW.