It has been a dramatic past 24 hours of weather over Ireland and the British Isles with the most spectacular arguably in the last 6 hours over the Midlands as severe thunderstorms (pretty rare for the UK) produced large hail, torrential downpours, damaging wind gusts and constant thunder and lightning. There have been unconfirmed reports of one or two tornadoes with certainly confirmed reports of persistent rotation within a strong cell(s) over the East Midlands.

While parts of Leichestershire and Shropshire were under water this afternoon, hail ‘larger than golf balls’ fell in parts of Warwickshire causing car windows to smash. A car show room roof in Redditch collapsed due to the weight of the hailstorm.

There was two storms which popped up over Wales around 8am this morning and tracked northeastwards amid the chilly mid and upper level flow associated with the low to the southwest. As these cells entered the Midlands, they encountered the heat and humidity surging up from the Southeast and this greatly sharpest the lapse rate (measure of temperature difference with height in atmosphere), causing them to explode. As they grew, reaching greater heights in the much colder high levels of the atmosphere, this along with conflicting winds with height, caused them to turn severe. They produced the flooding rains, damaging winds and hail as well as possible tornadoes once in this perfect environment of greatest thermal contrast and convergence.

The Midlands became the fightzone between very warm air in the South and cool air to the north. This region was also the zone supporting greatest directional shear and lapse rates as cold air flowed out of the SW and hot and humid air flowed underneath out of the SE. This was the convergence zone which transformed regular thunderstorms into monsters.

The major north-south east and west coast rail lines have been severely affected and blocked this afternoon due to landslides in Cumbria and others parts of the North of England

Sadly a man died when swept away in flood waters in Shropshire.

As for the Republic of Ireland and Ulster, the worst of the flash flooding and wild weather was over by this morning following last night’s deluge in both Cork and Belfast which caused significant flooding as the slow moving thunderstorms passed overhead.

Parts of the West of Scotland over Argyll and the Isles as well as just to the north of Loch Lomond saw thunderstorms. A large flare up of convection was seen in the east but thankfully the bulk of the biggest storms appeared to remain out over the North Sea. Glasgow and Edinburgh and well as the rest of the main population core of Scotland appear to have missed the wild weather.

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