UK Storms, The Worst In Living Memory
By Graham Smith on June 29, 2012, 4:25pm
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Yesterday, many parts of the United Kingdom experienced flash flooding and severe disruption, in what is being described as the most severe and intense outbreak of thunder storms in the UK, in living memory.
At one stage, the UK's ATD (Arrival Time Differencing) lightning detection system was registering over 10000 strikes an hour. An indication of the scale of electrical activity can be seen in the following lightning detection graphic from yesterday evening:
The storms were fuelled by large swathes of unstable air, created by a “Spanish Plume” event. This is where warm air is dragged up over the UK from Spain & France, in this case, by a low pressure system sitting to the west of the country. The warm air collided with the cooler air over the UK, producing steep lapse rates and providing ideal convective conditions. Multiple weather fronts and troughs over the UK provided the “trigger” mechanism for storm production and favourable wind sheer allowed storms to grow to their full potential.
The storms produced flash flooding, spectacular lightning strikes, golf-ball sized hail and even tornadoes, as the day progressed.
At one point, both the East and West coast mainline railways were closed near the Scottish border, due to flooding and land-slides. Travel disruption was widespread and tragically, a 66 year old man in Shropshire (Michael Ellis) lost his life in the midst of flash flooding. Thousands of homes were left without power and even today, power companies are working to restore power to over 2400 homes.
The storms helped to make this April-June period the wettest in the UK since 1910, when records began. Even before the storms, June was already the second wettest on record.
This spectacular video of lightning hitting the the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, was captured from an apartment block over looking the bridge:
As the clean-up operation now swings into high-gear, we're all hoping for an improving (or at least dryer) picture for the remainder of the 2012 “summer”.
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