May 6th: Late Evening Lightning, Hampshire

This was the first decent lightning display here since June 2009. A 'Spanish Plume' became established during the 6th, bringing very warm temperatures for so early in the year. I headed to the coast at dusk, ahead of a developing area of showers and storms in the English Channel. After the gust front of earlier had passed, just light rain fell for about two hours or so. However, at around 21:30 BST some mid-level instability moved across and small, but quite intense, storms developed just offshore. The first few shots are from Milford-On-Sea:

I had to hand-hold these few as the rain and wind prevented me setting up the tripod outside. All lightning was cloud-to-cloud, and seemed to originate from the same area, over the Isle of Wight:

This was the largest and closest strike, followed by near-instant and loud thunder:

That cell soon died, but another, more active cell, formed just to my west. As it moved inland, lightning became more photogenic:

I followed the storm to the north and into the New Forest. It looked even more spectacular from this location, and the lightning became much more impressive:

Further storms developed towards dawn, but I was too tired and it was too light to get any images. Overall though I was pleased to get these shots as we've had so little in the last 2-3 years.