UKC

Last night the dog woke me and I got to enjoy over and hour of almost continuous lightning. To start with it was out to see and was lighting the whole sky like some alien battle off Independence Day but the eerie thing was it was completely silent. Even when it went over their was just a constant low roar/hum. At one point we were up to 620 strikes an hour! I have never seen anything like it, quite amazing. Anyone else in the locale?

Cheers

Toby

In reply to Toby_W:

What time was this? I woke up at one point (I think around 0215 or so) and heard thunder but didn't think to look outside.

In reply to Toby_W:

Yes. I was half asleep, but it was as you described. We must have had about an hour of continuous lightning flashes together with heavy rain and a quietish thunder the whole time, which didn't sound like it was coming from overhead.

In reply to Toby_W:

We had the same here on the edge of Dartmoor, quite amazing but we had rumbles of thunder too. Me and the Mrs sat up in bed watching it for over an hour although the two dogs somehow managed to sleep through it!

In reply to Toby_W

Arrived over Cardiff just before 3. It felt apocalyptic! The lightning just wouldn't stop, and there was constant rumbling but none of those sky-ripping claps of thunder. The most intense thunderstorm I've ever experienced in the UK.

In reply to Toby_W:

I was open bivvying in the Wye Valley with no bivvy bag, got hit by the full brunt. It was bloody scary. Didn't sleep.

In reply to Toby_W:

The thunder sounded very much like the sky gods putting out their wheelie bins for collection.

In reply to Toby_W:
Drove through the entire thing, Exeter to Bodmin. It was like the tropics, not Cornwall. Relentless lightning the whole way and torrential downpours. Exciting!

In reply to Toby_W:

We were trudging back from a party at a friend's house and stopped in the street for about half an hour to gawp. The two Romanian prostitutes we pointed it out to were pretty nonplussed though. "We have this all the time in Romania". No pleasing some people.

We put out deck chairs in the garden and glugged a bottle of Malbec watching the rest. Beautiful.

In reply to Toby_W:
I was hoping to get it in the midlands and looking on this site last night -https://www.lightningmaps.org/
Saw you were having something spectacular - you lucky folk!
Very envious.

In reply to mary:

Yes, I would have liked to see it too. Nothing in Mold in North Wales. Very disappointing.

In reply to Toby_W:

Christ, I hope my house is ok!!!

In reply to Toby_W:

I was camping in Pembroke and was kept awake by it. In hindsight I wish I'd got out of the tent to enjoy the show, but the reality is that I was shitting myself with my sleeping bag pulled over my head until I fell back to sleep.

In reply to Toby_W:

Apparently we had a humdinger of a storm just off the coast of Hastings on Sunday night, all my friends and neighbors were talking about it yesterday.

I slept through it all. It's strange that thunder doesn't always wake me - could it be because it's a natural sound, unlike an explosion which does wake me? I remember when the RNLI used to fire maroons when they launched the Hastings life boat. That always woke me, but they don't do it any more, the crew is summoned by mobile phone and pagers these days.

In reply to Toby_W:

It was pretty good here - all between clouds and silent though. One tall cloud in particular seemed to be a hotspot. I took my camera and fisheye lens out to take pics but it had moved too far away by the time I was ready and I didn't take my normal lenses .