Looks like severe weather over the next 48 hours could bring 75-100mm of rain in places across the southwest, with Somerset looking the most likely to be worst hit. There appears to be 2 scenarios running at atm, so things are changing literally by the hour.

As the warnings state, it will get pretty squally with hail, flash flooding and the possibility of tornadoes.

While enthusiasts like myself enjoy the thrill of such events, I only hope that we dont end up with any fatalities or another Boscastle

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Tornadoes and hail???

Do you mean the BBC may have got the snow prediction right afterall?

http://midlandsweather.org.uk/showth...51#post1011251

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Things are definatally going for it now to the south east, from the visable radar the storms are lined up in the north of France and coming over the channel, the sea tempratures are warm too so they are not loosing much power.

Heres the sat. image


and heres the strikes

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Looking at the synoptic pressure charts Synoptic Pressure Charts
its the low to the Sw (bottom left corner of sat picture posted above) that we've gotta watch for the 5th

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Storm risk is high in the west midlands

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Spent all the afternoon watching the storms come up from several sites, here's the latest sat pic, and ive put in the direction of the storms... Looks like we are in for a good show soon

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Still looks favourable on teh latest TORRO update, but no hint of which way it will go yet.

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Estofex report the following until 06:00 Wednesday

Storm Forecast
Valid: Tue 04 Jul 2006 06:00 to Wed 05 Jul 2006 06:00 UTC
Issued: Tue 04 Jul 2006 02:46
Forecaster: VAN DER VELDE

SYNOPSIS

An upper longwave trough with its axis between Ireland and Portugal produces an active convective weather regime over western Europe. A midlevel PVA max and warm air advection induce the development of a thermal low over southwestern France. This development seems to have been delayed somewhat in recent GFS model runs. GFS 18Z forecasts this low and strong 10m convergence at 18Z in the level 2 area, and at 21Z in the north part of that area. GFS06Z had this feature already in northern France at 21Z.

Another low is moving over Finland and northwestern Russia, with a cold front/occlusion stretching all the way into Sweden (turning into warm front).


DISCUSSION

...western France...

A large area should see MLCAPE (50 hPa)values ranging from 800-2000 J/kg, with deep layer shear over 15 m/s, locally >100 m2/s2 SREH, to over 20 m/s with SREH values higher than 200 m2/s2 possible in southwestern France. It is in the latter area that the low starts to develop, with GFS forecasting convective precip from 18Z-03Z. The strong shear and sr-helicity are likely to produce supercells in the late afternoon and early evening, with a chance of large hail (possibly extremely large) and severe downburst gusts: at 15Z the LCL-LFC difference becomes zero while LCL heights are around 2500m in this area, so that downdrafts can become more than 15 degrees cooler than the vicinity. At 18Z, strong low level convergence and upper PVA should come together and will organize a linear MCS bearing a threat of widespread severe gusts, especially near bowing segments. Mid/low level winds will be nothing special so that extremely severe gusts should be rare. Large hail will also locally be possible. This system will move north/northeastward and reach northwestern France in the late night.

In addition, models hint at convection in the afternoon over central and northern France, which may be in multi- or supercell mode, with a chance of large hail. This may also spawn an MCS/cluster in the evening near Belgium and perhaps the Channel area. This convection is expected to have lower coverage of severe weather.

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great Sat inges guys

Its difficult to try and pinpoint a area for storms at the moment as they seem to be building then dissapating quickly. the English / Welash borderline has seen a couple of good storms withing the past 2 hours heading north along it.

As for the Sat. images there's alot of cloud covering much of UK - that will not help convection at all, could do with some clear spells to up the temprature to feed the convection prosess. Even so there has been a few reports of isolated storms around mid to southern UK. As you can see off the image the English / Welsh border has been sunny and clear to aid the storms energy.

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