The Met Office has a yellow weather still in place for thunderstorms across large swathes of the UK, including West Midlands, but a fresh batch will arrive in the coming days
Weather maps show the UK is braced for more rain and storms after thunder last night sounded “like a bomb went off”.
Incredible displays of lightning jolted across the sky overnight while thunder rocked people’s homes, waking residents. Travel disruption hit the morning rush hour, stretching from London to Exeter. People living in warning areas covering large parts of southern England and Wales were told to prepare for possible power cuts due to damage from the storm.
A yellow weather warning remains in place for large swathes of the country, including West Midlands and East of England, tonight because as much as 50mm of rain could fall. The weekend will start off drier but weather maps issued by forecasters at Ventusky show the next band of thunderstorms will arrive on bank holiday Monday night.
These will impact similiar areas to last night, notably the Home Counties and parts of the Southwest of England. The worst of the storms are forecast for Oxfordshire, where as much as 7mm of rain could fall each hour from around 6pm on Monday.
The red dots on the map, created by InMeteo forecasters, represent thunderstorms, scattered across southern counties. The yellow and orange hue denote the heaviest rainfall. Thunder is expected alongside the heaviest rainfall in and around Bicester in the northern part of Oxfordshire.
In West Sussex, a care home was evacuated on Wednesday night after a tree collapsed on top of it overnight, while students were also rushed out of a university building in the area because of a lightning strike damaging the roof.
Similar rainfall levels are anticipated on Monday night in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. It’ll be wet elsewhere in the Midlands too, notably Shropshire.
Writing on its website, the Met Office says: “Remaining unsettled for the bank holiday. Rain at times, with heavy showers but sunnier spells from time to time. Temperatures generally above average way from cloud and rain.”
It is the warm plume of air, moving from the south, which is causing the frequent storms this week. The atmosphere is unstable – warm air exists underneath much colder air – and this leds to the occurrence of stormy weather.
But those trying to sleep during the storms on Wednesday evening joked that the weather needed to “give it a rest” as loud thunder jolted them awake, with many saying it “sounded like bomb went off”. Another wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Never mind laying eggs, my poor chickens and ducks will be s****ing bricks.”