July 18th/19th: Spanish Plume Thunderstorms - Bournemouth and New Forest
After around 2 years with no photogenic storms (or any weather for that matter) in this area, the evening of the 18th/19th brought back memories of some of the all-night lightning storms we had here in the 1990s when I was growing up. The first storm of the evening was a bit of a surprise; it developed near the Channel Islands and moved onshore just east of Bournemouth as a Mesoscale Convective Vortex (MCV). These events are quite unusual here, and it developed a clear rotation as it travelled across the country. I was in Bournemouth, just on its western edge, but a very nice example of a 'dry' gust front, with a roll cloud, moved over at around 1730 BST, giving a brief spell of strong winds. The first photo is of its approach, with some nice cloud structure:
As it went overhead (left to right in the first image, right to left in the second) it showed very turbulent air in its wake, with rapidly rolling scud. Some lightning and a few rumbles of thunder, along with a short shower, was all we had rom this when the storm itself arrived 30 minutes later:
After a lull of 3 hours or so a new line of mid-level storms began to form about 10 miles offshore. The Sun had just set, so there was an erie blue-ish light and the tops of the storms could clearly be seen. Note how shallow the Cbs are due to their high bases:
The line of storms then only slowly moved towards my location (Bournemouth clifftop) over the next 2-3 hours, so I had the perfect setting for getting photos as they approached:
This was a closer strike from a small storm that developed ahead of the main band - I had to shelter from the rain for a few minutes as it passed, but was soon back out again:
As the rain and wind arrived, around 0130 BST on the 19th, I drove a few miles up the road to the New Forest. I managed to get right underneath the line, and shot these out of the car windscreen:
Finally. a last CG strike as the storms moved away to the north. Overall lightning was within 10 miles for around 6 hours, with visible lightning from before sunset to just before sunrise. I don't expect we'll see that again for a while:
