Storms coming?

See http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime?lang=en .

On my other blog I may have been premature saying that the storms had missed us for today. There was a lightning strike about 5km east of Newmarket just now and over lunch it rained very heavily here, albeit briefly. Maybe we'll catch it later? Thunder (for now) has passed.

Lightning tomorrow?

Today, the evening looks fine, but tomorrow and Sunday the remains of Hurricane Bertha are due to hit us, so we may get strong winds and lots of rain, possibly some storms too. See http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime?lang=en . Athough no longer a hurricane, now a tropical storm, what is left of Hurricane Bertha could still land a nasty punch here in East Anglia. We'll have to see what comes our way.

Approaching storm?

According to the lightning map, there is a storm moving down in our direction from The Wash area. It will be while before we'll know the exact path, but currently it is heading our way.

UPDATE 1555z:   Seems the storm is currently tracking SE towards north Norfolk. We may miss it. Time will tell.

Thunder and lightning around

After several days of hot weather (20-21 deg C) , there is thunder and lightning around today. We are dodging the storms. A useful map showing where there is storm activity in Europe (including the UK) is at:

http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime?lang=en

It is possible to see where the storms are bad and how they are moving. The map at present (1540z) shows bad storms in the Alps and storms here in East Anglia. We seem to be in a gap now between very bad weather.

http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime?lang=en

The thunder returned just after we'd watered the garden (Sod's law) followed by a burst of heavy rain for 5 minutes. I think the rain will be around most of the evening on and off. At the moment there is no lightning, so the storm must be a little way off? Having said that, we just had a very loud thunder clap! It is about 3km away again (1640z). The lightning map shows widespread storm activity in East Anglia right now.

In the meantime, our son in Kent is on the beach after school. There they have good weather.

UPDATE 1720z: At the moment, the storms have ended but the lightning map shows a further storm is due to come through. At present it is over the Peterborough area and moving SE.