SITE NAVIGATION :: HOME :: THUNDERSTORMS :: ARCHIVE :: T0040
THUNDERSTORM 0040
|
Date: 15-08-2001 It does make a change when you’ve been expecting a thunderstorm for days judging off charts and it actually arrives. I was stalking this system since the early parts of this week, and despite the surprise T0039 this morning, it produced a good sequence of active cells as predicted along the cold front. In fact, there were only two cells in the entire country. The main cell began in the south west and sustained itself all the way up to the north-west which is unusual. However a second cell (Cell 1 in this case as it hit first) was shown on the radar developing just to the south of the Pennine ridge, which suggests it was orographically triggered and will also explain the high-base it had. It clipped Macclesfield to the south-east before Cell 2 (the main cell) approached. This sequence of cells earned the award of “Storm of the Year” for this year as this first cell gave large amounts of C-G over the Pennines as it rolled over. They were mostly high-amp judging from the nature of the thunders, however some of the C-Gs were quite faint buried within the rain curtains and as the first cell was high-based it would have forced more powerful C-Gs to occur.
The main cell which followed swiftly behind to the south west was the bigger one and arrived once the first cell had rolled over the Pennines, but it didn’t pass directly overhead. It too clipped Macclesfield but this time to the north-west. The light was fading by this time, but it was still evident the cell was being fed from the back given away by an updraught base. However before I could see this there was a large wave of low-level stratus cloud seen rushing in eastwards from the outflow as it arrived (arcus cloud).
The lightning activity was situated at the back-end near the updraughts in the form of distant C-Cs and I-Cs. Although they were too far away to hear the thunder, they showed up well against the cloud in the fading light.
|
