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Doing a weather check at around 0615 Sunday morning, I was surprised to
see a distant flash of lightning.

A look at radar returns suggests that the storm was in the Southampton
/ Winchester area some 200 kilometres from where I was observing in the
south of Cambridgeshire. I am impressed by the distance that the storm
was visible. However, a calculation of line of sight from my vantage
point at over 400 feet above sea level to an object (flash) at say
25,000 feet is in excess of 350 kilometres. It was just a slight
surprise to realise that distant flashes can be as far away as this. I
had tended to assume (without really thinking about it) that they were
much closer.

Jack


I remember one occasion talking to Norwich ATC who had observed lightning to
their SE. IIRC the nearest sferics were near Amsterdam.

Jon.

Jon O'Rourke wrote:

I remember one occasion talking to Norwich ATC who had observed lightning to
their SE. IIRC the nearest sferics were near Amsterdam.

As a youngster living in Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast, I would
often see thunderstorms way out to the east. Many, many years later as
a commercial pilot, I would frequently have to dodge around storms some
40 kms off the Dutch coast. This seemed to be a favoured area for
storm development, especially at night. With more understanding, I
would now presume that one of the contributory factors is a land breeze
convergence.

There is an interesting convergence at this very moment (0940) with a
narrow line of showers running from Weymouth to Norwich. The
converging winds show well on: http://www.xcweather.co.uk/

Jack

Jack ) wrote:
Jon O'Rourke wrote:

I remember one occasion talking to Norwich ATC who had observed lightning to
their SE. IIRC the nearest sferics were near Amsterdam.

As a youngster living in Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast, I would
often see thunderstorms way out to the east. Many, many years later as
a commercial pilot, I would frequently have to dodge around storms some
40 kms off the Dutch coast. This seemed to be a favoured area for
storm development, especially at night. With more understanding, I
would now presume that one of the contributory factors is a land breeze
convergence.

I remember seeing distant lightning to the west through much of the
night from Cardiff airport many years ago. I found out later in the
night that the nearest storms were running down the Irish Sea close to
the east coast of Ireland.