[error]HEAVY & PERSISTENT RAIN BAND FOCUSED OVER SW SCOTLAND, NW ENGLAND TODAY WILL PUSH SLOWLY NORTH TONIGHT, COULD BRING FLOODING & THUNDERSTORMS TO CENTRAL BELT[/error]

The good old British summer eh, heavy rains have turned the Isle of Wight Rock Festival into a fiasco as the grounds became a mudbath causing gridlock on the roads which forced people to spent the night in their cars. Further north, heavy and persistent rains have been causing localised flooding throughout Southwest Scotland down across Cumbria, Lancashire through the Manchester area. A widespread 2-3 inches could tally up when all is said and done in this saturated part of the country where the moisture keeps streaming in on the storm’s west and south sides out of the northwest. These rains are made worse by northwesterly gales with gusts well into the 40 mph range across Northern Ireland while the NW coast of England and Wales have seen gusts between 50-60 mph.

Following a very wet night, Central Scotland saw some respite with even brightness filtering through late this morning into the early afternoon. The humid and warming at the surface, combined with the instability of the atmosphere with the low directly overhead produced some pretty strong thunderstorms which has brought plenty of thunder, lightning and torrential downpours..

Concerns Of Heightened Flood Potential Tonight For Central Scotland As Rain Band Lifts North From England

Unfortunately for Central Scotland, the heavy stream of moisture focused over the NW of England just now looks to lift slowly north through tonight. This will bring potentially several hours of ENHANCED heavy and persistent rain back over the M8 corridor. I say enhanced because we are seeing very heavy rain just now via a more thunderstorm based set-up caused by instability whereas this will be the same rain band which brought the heavy, persistent rains last night.

Personally, the real worry is that we could see embedded thunderstorms within the band as it migrates north as the low kicks northeast into the North Sea. Persistent rain with embedded torrential downpours could bring widespread flooding, even flash flooding. I expect between 5pm tonight and 9am tomorrow morning another 1-3 inches of rain across the main Glasgow to Edinburgh M8 corridor.