Here in my part of Derby, its been rumbling off and on for over 2 hours, with light rain and a few minutes now and again of a little heavier stuff with bigger 'spots'.

Promising but not delivering.

Indeed, especially when this feature recently produced a downpour here! Image c/o of the Meto. at 2115 BST 

Thunder now in London as reported by better half

Southern England - especially the SW - has a chance of some thunder later on today.

However, Ukraine wins today's lightning hot spot- 100 strikes/min at the moment over a large swathe of the country!

https://www.lightningmaps.org/#y=49.2365;x=24.5531;z=5;t=3;m=sat;r=0;s=1;o=0;n=0;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;

Just noticed that tight little number on the radars, however the Kent Rain Deflector is back up and running again as that thundery cluster is moving westwards away from us with the sun coming back out at this end (albeit hazy).

A lively cluster of storms in NE France - I wonder if they'll make the Channel crossing?

http://en.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=12

Just noticed those myself.....we can but hope.

Well those storms appear to be dying as they start to cross the channel and the sky "doesn't look Thundery" on the South coast at this moment. .....only time will tell I guess. 

Looks like you're right. The Belgian cluster to our ESE looks set to get a little closer, but even that may only clip the coast.

Cool channel waters not helping.  Grazing Hastings Dungeness and Beachy Head perhaps?

Can see the very occasional distant flash in the very far southern horizon as a cell attempt to make the Channel crossing, but don't think it'll come to anything more.

I've just taken a trip up to Capel to view. Nothing of note really. I observed about 3 semi large flashes in 10 minutes. All a long way off though and slipping westwards through the Channel.

It's an interesting forced line now running quite rapidly west across southernmost counties of England. Not often you see such a thing moving in such a way. It actually resembles a tropical wave - but with less intense convection of course! High-resolution radar captures the rolling nature of the leading edge very nicely. Given the fairly clear skies ahead of it, if it was daytime I imagine you'd see a formation rather like a gust front. If only!

We'd also be seeing some dramatic events as surface heating factored in. As it is, any electrification as it moves over land will depend on updrafts forced by higher terrain I expect - this being a good possibility due to the steady easterly flow near the surface.

The models sure have struggled to capture the path of this thing - though the morning BBC forecasts seem to have done well.

Interesting development  shown on the radar - from nothing at 3.00 to a tiny local storm perhaps 5 miles across over Fareham at 3.30 to 15miles x 30 miles over the New Forest at 4.15 to a nearly circular cell over Poole at 5.30 to something perhaps 60 miles across at 7pm over Dorchester and still moving WSW

they could be seen this evening as the sun set.. In surprised that there have been no reports in here from them

Here we've just had a nice gust front through and some heavy rain but no thunder. Quite lively storms earlier toward Torquay.