What a great start to 2014!

A couple of decent rumbles of thunder around 0030hrs from a cell that moved NE from Southampton. Died out now but a great start nonetheless!

Good flash and bang over Chichester at, I think, just before midnight - but being tucked up in bed and well dosed with paracetamol , I wasn't taking much interest.

Net radar looks quite nasty to the south and southwest of here.

Heavy showers across many parts of the S tonight. I'd imagine some thundery outbreaks too.

PS: Middle of winter and here we are talking thunder instead of snow. Just about says it all....

This WSW regime seems to be the ultimate setup for showers here - once again it's been chucking it down on and off ever since darkness fell.

Shame there's no thunder this time - in fact no flashes at all as the unpredictable rain cancels many firework plans.

Another line of organised convection is about to move through, followed by yet another from the west, after which a larger mass of rain looks to come along - possibly consisting of two convective lines merged together. There's popcorn convection behind that, but looking at the Met Office projections it appears that only the strongest of those will survive long enough to reach here.

Looking further ahead, there looks be a further load of showers behind the rapidly moving frontal system tomorrow night, many of them becoming organised again.

It's these showers that the models struggle to predict, and which lead to event totals higher than the model projections in some places... but it does tend to be sporadic, with other places falling short instead... across a given river catchment it probably averages out not far from the model projections of NAE and WRF. Not sure about GFS.

Of course, standing water and streams can respond sharply to a string of successive downpours, as is very much in evidence around here these days!

Fierce looking squall feature moving across the south at the moment. Should get here in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile plenty of sferics over the seas to the SW

Lightning seen to the west of here at 4.45pm, still pretty breezy, but rain has stopped for now, stars shining.

very heavy rain in bound s/e  withing the hour  be  carefull

The squall line has arrived here with torrential rain, also very gusty.

Bloody hell, it held tgether for once! Just arrived here.

Absolutely threw it down 5:15-5:45 this morning, reminiscent of April showers!

http://estofex.org/

Today looks to be a very active day across Ireland, Wales and England, with convective cells throughout the daylight hours and multiple waves leading to more organised features, all of which pose a severe/damaging wind gust threat.

Ironically it's dead calm here this morning 

Anyway, impressive activity across Cornwall and Devon this morning as a fairly active chain of cells tracks ENE. The leading one  has recently been behaving like a proper thunderstorm - not just one of those 'thundery showers' that we usually get at this time of year.

The squall smashed through here near Hythe with an almighty thumping gust of wind (probably 50mph) just before 08.30hrs. I'm at work with no access to rainfall data but easily another 2-3mm in that 10 minute period.

And there she blows. Off out to sea what she can sea sea sea now. A bit wild for a short time, but nothing spectacular in the end.

an interesting day ahead. Lovely looking radar returns

Thunder 0845-1000 with a squall around 0915, in Crediton (Devon).

Potent convection line to your west. More patchy than it was but has a number of cells in it

Very interesting convection line moving NE this morning. Lots of hail and lightning activity and at times creating a mini bow echo effect as can be seen from the Raintoday 1130z radar grab as an intense cell hammers Hertfordshire