Days of Thunder weather forecast for UK

The Met-office have issued a number of Yellow thunderstorm warnings for the UK.

Highlighting frequent lightning, large hail ice and flash flooding from the intense rainfall.

The impacts could see values of at least 50mm quickly in a two or three-hour period in a few places.

By Wednesday the focus will shift to the warnings across southern England.

Dan Suri is the Met Office’s chief forecaster for today. He said: “The change in weather regime will see the heat of the last few days slip away from the south and east, this will be increasingly replaced with more unsettled conditions with heavy showers, thunderstorms and torrential downpours being key hazards over the UK until Wednesday.

“Although not all places will be affected, where thunderstorms occur there is the potential to for very large rainfall totals, but when that heavy rain is falling on extremely dry ground, the risk of flash flooding is much more pronounced.

“With no meaningful rainfall in some southern locations since June, soils in these areas have become baked by the sun turning them into hard almost impenetrable surfaces. Any rainfall in these areas won’t be able to soak away and instead it will wash off soils and other hard surfaces, creating flash flooding in some areas. This excess water can rapidly inundate some flood-prone areas. Particular areas of cautions are low-lying stretches of road and those areas adjoining sloping fields where water can quickly run off, creating fast-emerging hazards.”

The summer rainfall in parts of southern and central England is less than a quarter of what would be expected in a typical summer.

With two weeks to go until the end of summer, it is not expected that rainfall will balance the books.

For some areas Summer 2022 will be remembered as a very dry year.