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THUNDERSTORM 0067
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Date: 21-10-2006 I was having an afternoon siesta when this occurred. I wasn’t expecting any sort of thundery activity at all and was therefore oblivious to the weather scenario. I woke up and looked through the window to an ominous-looking rolling shelf cloud with heavy rain curtains behind it. My immediate response was to go online and look at radar imagery and lightning maps to see if any of it was active, which indeed it was. The cell that was approaching Macclesfield by this time didn’t have any history of activity, but as there were a few active cells to the south I pointed the camera at it anyway, given the way it looked on the horizon. I was right in doing so as it didn’t take long for it to become electrically active.
Over the period of its presence the storm gave five visible lightning discharges including some hypnotic cloud formations. The discharges were on average every 2 minutes, so quite active yet steady. A “Whales Mouth” formation was in effect with a rolling arcus cloud in front of the main rain curtain, and out of the five discharges dropped a nearby C-G. Using the new DV video camera I was still not used to all the functions, so I had it on a normal shutter speed and this C-G appeared to be streaked green sideways in the direction of the wind at the lower end of it, suggesting it was “ribbon” lightning.
The storm then dissipated as it moved northwest, but the rain band prevailed over the area.
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