We really are in the "eye" of what appears to be a shallow low pressure system anchored right over the South East, so all the rain is circulating around Kent (thunderstorms exiting the Sussex coast moving onto the Channel in doing so, while a mass of general rain over Holland is moving northwards onto the North Sea).

As a result it's quite fair, bright and dry here at Folkestone at the moment. The Folkestone Rain Deflector running at maximum strength.

This annotated map should show it more clearly (radar courtesy of Meteogroup) . . .

 

Hardly a drop of rain here overnight. Yet 5 miles to the east of me they've had serious precip. Very localised indeed.

Heaviest rain at an official guage so far seems to be 51.2 at Santon Downham, with 33.2mm in one hour. 

Northolt had 42.6mm in the space of two hours.

Well that weather in Brighton certainly brought them out!

https://twitter.com/thei100/status/493692266494849024/photo/1

Cheeky

I wonder if that's the Brighton version of the Spanish Bull Run

Only in Brighton!

Keeping an eye on the developing large cell in the S North Sea heading for Kent.

It has an interesting shape. It is modelled not to amount to much but worth keeping an eye on in next hour or so.

This morning it was bone dry here in Hampton Hill - 0mm reported.

Just 5 miles to the West, Shepperton recorded 46mm of rain.

Tomorrow is set to turn much better once all that North Sea crap does eventually move on.

It's been here for a little while now Neil, and the end result is...autumn! Nothing but featureless skies, moderate rain bursts, breezy. Just the regular vanilla rain shite

Clouds here are looking a bit menacing at the moment, you never know we might get a bit of welcome rain.

The only word I can use to describe what it's like here at the moment, is...'richardabdn'

Not even a hint of thunder to liven it up bit. I stupidly held off walking home earlier when I had a chance. Now I face a 2 mile walk in the equivalent of wading through liquid turd, with only minimal wet weather gear, and a poxy umberellerette that will go inside-out if but an ant farts nearby!

It's rain made landfall across the Swale area at around 18:30, currently chucking it down (can't verify the amounts but it's rattling off our inductrial unit roof).

The 'upstream' radar is looking dire, with no end in sight. I'm going to have to bite the bullet, take a deep breath, and swim home. As I speak, it's hammering against my North facing office window, and that'll be hammering against my North facing face soon!

Probably not the thread for this but i post it anyway...

In the car it said 14.5c  coolest reading for quite a while !! Chucking it down with rain, doesnt seem like it will storm unless the back end packs a punch 

The back end didn't go out with a big bang, it just ran out with a wet follow through. Thoroughly miserable evening it was, and as expected totally soaked on the way home.

Aaargh - no thunder for 30 hours!    #withdrawalsymptoms

Some heavy, thundery showers likely for parts of Wales, The Midlands and EA later on.

Some thundery activity in southern Leicestershire on net radar.

A good thunder storm just gone over and now heading East.  Some really good lightning forks and constant thunder.  One blinding fork and simultaneous gun fire crack frightened us to death and alarms now going off around us.  Not a lot of rain but nice electical activity.

I think it's heading towards Grantham.

All eyes on the weekend low now. Latest NMM model shows virtually no rain at all for SE England so could turn out to be a decent weekend here. SW England and Wales get hammered though. The storms over France miss the Kent coast as they drift north on Saturday afternoon.

Can only show the French charts unfortunately as the data upload on the UK chart is not working and is stuck on last night's 18z run

12z Friday http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2014073112/nmm-1-24-0.png?31-20

6z Saturday http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2014073112/nmm-1-42-0.png?31-20

12z Saturday http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2014073112/nmm-1-48-0.png?31-20

16z Saturday http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2014073112/nmm-1-52-0.png?31-20

On the other hand the EURO4 model wants to bring much more precipitation into the SE corner

Saturday 3z to 6z
http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/euro4/2014/07/31/basis12/ukuk/prty/14080206_2_3112.gif

Saturday 9z to 12z
http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/euro4/2014/07/31/basis12/ukuk/prty/14080212_2_3112.gif

So plenty of uncertainty at the moment. John Hammond acknowleged this on recent BBC News forecasts.

A very nice storm and unexpected.  Looking at the lightning map, we seem to be the only ones to have got it again.  We're quite good at growing our own storms here though we're in the shelter of the rugged Pennines to our West and the flat lands of Lincolnshire to our East, which I expect would be ideal terrain for convection.

The lightning map showed a few strikes around Norfolk and a concentrated group between Mansfield and Worksop, right where I am and it didn't move very far East before it fizzled out.