Tuesday 14 October 2014

Saturday 11th October 2014 - North Norfolk (Severe Storm)

After all the fun and games of the few days before I was enjoying a nice fishing trip for my birthday on the Norfolk Broads and sitting in Wroxham on my parents boat not really focusing on the weather as the forecast called for any heavy thundery showers much further south over the SE Of England.

At about 5pm I started to hear distant thunder way off to the South West over towards Norwich and after inspecting the clouds noted that there was hardly if any eastwards movement in the storm with it firmly heading northbound towards the North Norfolk coast towards Cromer, I was still hopefull with the early nights drawing in that I could capture some distant lightning as darkness fell at about 620pm.

With light fading the flickering of lightning was getting stronger and was now in the updraught area now much more towards my south, the storm was looking like it was either backbuilding further south or taking a hard right turn and turning towards the east. My camera was still put away in its case on the boat so I ventured around the cottages to get a much better view to my west, and once I got around there I was stunned to see an amazing shelf cloud approaching that would not have been out of place in Tornado Alley, Lightning was almost constant now and thunder was rolling from most areas of the storm almost constantly.

Picture shows Shelf Cloud



With a direct hit 100% happening it was time to pack away the fishing rods (Carbon ?) and hunker down on the boat to ride out the storm, very heavy rain hit just after 6pm and also some pea sized hail, the lightning was really impressive but it seemed the core of the storm passed to our North probably over Coltishall. As soon as we were under the rain free anvil area it was time for the Canon to earn its keep and i picked a nice vantage spot overlooking the River Bure with some Boats in view to shoot some lightning.

This was a VERY Impressive Storm for Uk Standards and I guess my Birthday Present from Mother Nature this year was one of the best, right place at the right time definately!

Lightning Pictures Below






Wed 8th - Thurs 9th & Friday 10th October 2014 - SE Essex Storms

All 3 days this week would see storms in the SE Essex area, quite warm and muggy air was still in place with decent dewpoints in the high 50's.

On Wednesday the 8th October SE Essex received 37mm of rain in 6 hours from 6am until 12 Noon with embedded thunder and lots of places endured flash flooding around the area.

Thursday 9th October would see a pokey little single cell storm track up through Kent to hit the Southern part of Essex and produce a few flashes of lightning and some decent structure, this storm skimmed the Leigh On Sea area and mainly affected the Rayleigh and Wickford area, almost zero rainfall was collected as a result.

The storm on the night of Friday 10th October was much better with a line of storms stretching from the Herne Bay area south-westwards to Brighton in a constant line producing frequent lightning (Mainly Inter-Cloud) but with the odd Cg thrown in for good measure. I could not capture this storm as I was travelling at 8pm to North Norfolk for a weekend on my parents boat, pretty gutted at having to leave this almost stationery storm I grabbed my camera anyway on the off chance something might make its way upto Norfolk later that night, and it was a good job i took the Canon as I would be repaid very well with a borderline Supercell on Saturday 11th October which will be covered in the next blog.

All in all a great 3 days of weather for SE Essex and continues the run of amazing storms captured in this part of the Uk this year.

Also this week we got visited by another rare phenomenum with a Circumzenithal Arc just sitting above the house in the Picture Below.

The 2nd Picture shows the Birthday Structure of the 9th October Storm!


Friday 19th September 2014 - SE Essex Surface Based Storm

After a few days of very warm weather the breakdown occured in spectacular fashion today with a Storm erupting in North Kent and in the Estuary. Earlier in the day the London area had been affected by a very slow moving thunderstorm and the top of this storm was visible from South East Essex, sitting almost stationary for a few hours, I noted a large TCU To the south for most of the afternoon and at 4pm a thick fog rolled in off the estuary and nearby North Sea which blotted out the Cb from view and that was that for the day........Or so I thought!

At about 7pm thunder became audible to my South and South East and High Up Blue Flashes above the fog started to appear, it really was a surreal sound with muffled thunder with a storm above the fog still a way off to the south. This continued for about an hour with still thick fog at my location, the storm was obviously getting closer as the thunder was now quite loud, still no Cg's were in view but the flashes were now getting very vivid.

At 8pm the first Cg Bolts started to appear through the Fog, this was an amazing sight but very hard to photograph with a very murky orange glow throughout. I ventured out into the garden when it was obvious these bolts were now hitting the ground, 3 strikes in a row had me running for cover with an almost instant flash and crash with some landing just a few gardens away, I tried my hardest to capture these but it was impossible to pick anything out with the awful visibility.

A little after this we started to get 2mm Hail falling which started to clear the Fog briefly, and hard on the Hails tail was very heavy rainfall which cleared the fog instantly, we were now firmly under the core of the storm and it dropped 25mm of rain in 30 minutes, a little after this the storm blew itself out over the crouch estuary to my North East and all was calm again within 30 minutes.

No pictures worthy of keeping on this storm but quite a spectacular storm once again for Uk Standards.