STORM CHASING, THUNDERSTORM, SOUTH OF UK. Thursday 1st August 2024

A successful chase yesterday afternoon blasting into the southern counties where we seen multiple cells fighting there way through.

We initially started Thursday evening in Somerset to see if any cells were to pop off early morning into Friday. We did however manage to put a couple meet and greet sessions on.

Friday afternoon we began to move east and intercepted our first cell of the day forming just east of Andover which down to road network meant we were coming in hot from behind.

We were looking at pushing north just before this into Swindon but the cell out there was essentially being eaten up by the cell we was getting on so we stuck to it.

Big rainfall accumulations resulted in a lot of flooded surfaces on the A303 & M3.

We had to make a quick decision as to whether we stay with this cell and head north and into London or drop south due to road networks could be an issue especially flooding and another cell popping off southwest of it moving in.

We made a tactical plan to drop south, say but to the cell we was on and greet the one coming in just north of Southampton, Petersfield.

We seen some nice things showing on the radar but trying to find a good vantage area was sun and with this cell breathing down on us quick we decided to pull over to try catch some video!

Some great structure and Arcus as it moved in when a lot of Cloud-cloud lightning were overhead with some pretty decent sound of crackling thunder. Rain hammered it down with some rather gusty straight line winds smacking us. Rather squishy at times with a few bolts landing but hard to deal with it when your growing line a rat. 😂

The MetOffice mentioned there were around 7000 lightning strikes in association with the thunderstorms across central and southern England on Thursday

Anyone who wanted to know, our tracker has calculated a Total of 494 miles and a total of 32h 9mins out on storm chase activation.

Talk about dedication and commitment!