Penellype's Weather Channel

[chillithyme]

It feels like thunderstorms are on the way, it is very humid and sticky here since this morning

[bikermike]

Which end of london are you?

It's gently raining here in the hillstations to the north...

[chillithyme]

The opposite to you ish We didn't have any thunderstorms in the end, some rain which is fine by me. Another muggy day and no rain

[bikermike]

It's odd, isn't it? Gets muggy and sticky and then... just rains. I feel short-changed for thunder and lightning...

[Penellype]

It's odd, isn't it? Gets muggy and sticky and then... just rains. I feel short-changed for thunder and lightning...

You can have all of mine - I hate it!

Things should get brighter and warmer for the rest of the week (currently we have persistent drizzle that is too fine for the radar to detect), with a possibility of storms at the weekend, although there seems to be some doubt over this now. Temperatures look set to crash at the start of July, after which everything is up for grabs.

[Gillykat]

It's odd, isn't it? Gets muggy and sticky and then... just rains. I feel short-changed for thunder and lightning...

Same here in Alnwick! here was a bit of heavy rain in the early hours of Monday but all we got otherwise were two pathetic rumbles of thunder at around 1pm!!! Drizzly Tuesday and since then it's been sunny. We haven;t had a decent storm for at least two years!!!

[Penellype]

Thunderstorms are very hard to forecast as they can be around in the area but not where you are. Even if the conditions are just right, you still need a trigger to set off the storm. This can be as simple as a bubble of warm air ascending into unstable air above, perhaps caused by the heat of a town or city, or even a power station.

One of the things that you need for thunderstorms is "CAPE", which stands for Convective Available Potential Energy, and is a measure of the energy in the atmosphere. This is related to heat and humdity, and there is a great example of it coming up this weekend. This is the situation at midnight tonight, with a plume of hot air over the south west:



As the hot air moves north and east the area of high CAPE expands, so by 6pm tomorrow it looks like this:



IF the correct triggers are there then there is enough energy in the atmosphere for severe storms in the red areas, but I have not heard much mention of storms in the forecasts, and there are no warnings in force, so something else may be missing. Having said that, the ECMWF model is picking out the risk of a band of severe storms moving across the northern half of the UK tomorrow evening, associated with a cold front moving into the hot air, so don't be surprised if storms do break out, and they could be quite intense:



Interestingly last weekend there wasn't a great deal of CAPE, with the colours green or yellow at the most, apart from in the south east, and that is probably why the storms were very limited elsewhere.

By 3am Sunday the hot air has moved away to the east and any storm risk has gone:



I should probably add that the Met Office model sees virtually no rain at all tomorrow night, which probably accounts for the lack of warnings.

[Nicos]

So you in the uk are about to have a taste of what we have at the moment

It's bed time...and 26C apparently. Our thermometer on the north side of the house says 30C...and we are experiencing some of the coolest weather in France

Keep cool and hydrated peeps!

[Penellype]

So you in the uk are about to have a taste of what we have at the moment

It's bed time...and 26C apparently. Our thermometer on the north side of the house says 30C...and we are experiencing some of the coolest weather in France

Keep cool and hydrated peeps!

Its not going to get anywhere near as hot here as in France, although some places are likely to get into the low 30s. The somewhat low maximums being forecast are something of a puzzle given the high upper air temperatures and I can only think that this is due to 2 factors, the first being that the sea temperatures are still relatively cool as water takes much longer than land to warm up, and the 2nd being that the ground still has a lot of moisture in it from last week's rain. Dry ground heats up much faster than wet ground, and evaporating water has a cooling effect, and I think this must be contributing to lower surface temperatures than you might expect given that the air is coming up from the Sahara.

[Penellype]

The Met Office have now issued a yellow warning of lightning for Northern Ireland and parts of western Scotland. There are already storms around in Ireland, and I am far from convinced that this will be confined to the warning area as there is so much CAPE today, but I am only an amateur. We shall see.

[Penellype]

Now there is a yellow warning of thunderstorms in the north east this evening. I can't say I am surprised. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather...a-656caf28152b

[1Bee]

Same here - might, sticky, stormy.... And then nothing. Not even more than a spattering of rain, sadly. We need a good soaking!

Temperatures for the next couple of weeks are looking surprisingly low up here on Met Check. Did that sound right?

[Penellype]

Same here - might, sticky, stormy.... And then nothing. Not even more than a spattering of rain, sadly. We need a good soaking!

Temperatures for the next couple of weeks are looking surprisingly low up here on Met Check. Did that sound right?

Yes, temperatures have dropped now, although it will still be pleasant in the sunshine. In the short to medium term a ridge of high pressure is forecast to build from the Azores, with the centre of the high to our south west. this means that the air is coming round the top of the high from a westerly or north westerly direction, which is relatively cool. The next week or so will probably be pretty dry, after that it is up for grabs.

[Gillykat]

Same here - might, sticky, stormy.... And then nothing. Not even more than a spattering of rain, sadly.

Yep, that's just about what we had in Alnwick too - not even a rumble of thunder

[chillithyme]

Rain has arrived, the ground will be happy, and should be easier for me to pull up the long weed roots too