Soaked!

My feet were soaked, my coat got soaked and hail and rain trickled down my neck! The bottom of my trousers acted like a wick and sucked up the water. I was still wearing sandals because I hurt my toes a few weeks ago and the sandals are squelching  so I’ve had to get my warm slippers on. It’s not very warm so I’ll get a hot shower.

April showers? Yesterday the next door town had a mini tornado that blew a caravan over and several trees were blown over in the east Midlands. Today we even had a thunderstorm. I only went out to meet a friend, we had a walked up the steep hill to her house and then I was stuck for a while because the hail and rain was so heavy. Water was streaming down the pavements and gutters which is why my feet got so wet.

We are lucky to have rain in this country but a lot of UK farmers have been affected by the wet winter months. Crops have been affected and are not growing like they should. The plants are basically being drowned and many flood warnings have been in force.

Better weather and a high pressure system is expected over the UK in the next few days. Meanwhile I’m going to try and get warm and dry!

Sometimes

Do you trust your instincts?

I’m rather wary of instincts, I have been known to trust people even when it has not been earned. Or distrust people who turned out to be the nicest and kindest people that I’d ever met before. But it’s not a regular problem, mostly my instincts aren’t too bad. And sometimes I know instinctively what’s going to happen. I don’t claim to have premonitions, but maybe I observe more subconsciously than I realise. So when something happens I feel vindicated.

But there was the one very odd incident. I dreamt of meeting old friends I hadn’t seen for years in the middle of a thunderstorm. Then a few days later we were cycling out to our friends when we met them and our old friends cycling the other way. That was strange enough, but the clouds were building up and the thunderstorm arrived! We had to take cover in a bus shelter. My dream actually came true! So maybe my instincts should be trusted. X

Slow thunder

Hard to see, but the rain is falling in our yard after several days of scorching heat that despite watering have dried out our hanging baskets.

Thunder is constantly rumbling south of us. I’ve checked blitzortung.org and you can see a large concentration of lightening strikes happening now about two miles away. I tried taking a screenshot of the website but this phone is an awkward beast at times. I’m going to post a video online but not here, I haven’t got enough memory anyway there’s some hail mixed in so it must be cold up in the storm.

The thunder missed us

There is a website called blitzortung.org you can open up, and if you look at the live maps you can see lightning strikes as they happen. The site covers the whole world but you can zoom in on it.

Tonight it got very dark and cloudy and we had a few flashes of lightning with rumbles of thunder about 5 to 3 miles away (10 and 6 seconds), Light travels fast, sound follows, so 2 seconds equals a mile away.

We just had some heavyish rain but the storm petered out. Looking at the lightning map, the storm split up into two. The storm stopped about three miles away from here

, but a branch of it was heading towards Crewe. There were over 5 thousand strikes in an hour!

I’ve been interested about lightening since I was talking to an elderly lady about 25 years ago. She said she was in her house several years before that. She had the window open because it was so hot, suddenly a ball of lightening came in through the window and bounced off the floor. She didn’t explain what happened afterwards, whether it just dissipated. But clearly it was not too traumatic. I have heard of ball lightning, so it might have been true….

Thunderbolts and lightning!

What is your favorite type of weather?

No thunderstorms in my sketch, just heavy rain. I have memories of several ⛈ thunderstorms though.

Years ago I dreamt of meeting some friends in a thunderstorm, a few days later we cycled over to visit our friends. We suddenly saw them coming towards us, we met up, pleased that we had got together. Then it started raining.. Hard! We ended up sheltering under a bus shelter while it thundered and lightning struck all around us.

Another incident was visiting a friend and a storm started a couple of miles away. We sat and watched it move across the sky while drinking red wine. As it passed over a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky.

Finally during a particularly vicious night time storm I stood on our back doorstep trying to catch an image of lightning on my camera phone. I did, but I can’t find it on my phone to show you so I’ve posted this drawing instead. X

It’s humid!

Image from blitzortung.org

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use this image of last night’s big thunderstorms. Blitzortung.org shows the movement of thunderstorms across the world with almost live graphics of lightning strikes. I looked a while ago and there is another group of storms coming up from the southwest tonight. I guess we really need the rain, I’m not complaining. I just feel hot and my glasses keep steaming up!

It’s interesting to watch other parts of the world but I wish I could also see rainfall radar at the same time as the thunderstorms may just be showers with rain covering only small areas, like microbursts.

Drought?

It might rain today, but most of England is parched. The south east, south midlands, and eastern counties look dry and brown from satellite images. We are in the same heatwave that has affected the rest of western Europe. Forecasts say the weather is due to break soon. But with thundery showers due there is not the persistent rain for many days that would replenish the ground water and because the soil is so hard and dry it is compacted and heavy rain could cause flash flooding…. Oh well, Brits always discuss the weather!

I want thunder and lightning!

I want the skies to darken, the winds to rise, I want a swirling storm, dancing leaves. Gusts and gales and the patter of heavy raindrops! I thought we were having that earlier but realised it was water pattering down on the kitchen roof from the hose! Instead of watering the plants he was watering the roof! He thought it would cool the air. Its 15°C cooler today than yesterday! We need relief for humans and the countryside. But not just here, worldwide. The trouble is its not just one country suffering.

Thunderstorms were forecast but haven’t happened yet. I’m watching www.http://blitzortung.org to see where the storms are. They seemed to be concentrated around France and Switzerland earlier on…..