Ferryhill Weather Extraordinary Days

Sometimes some days deserve more than just a statistics page. These are some of the more notable days of Ferryhill Weather.

THUNDERSTORM OF 31st AUGUST 2005

16:01 Today has peaked at just under 26 degC, making it the warmest day of the summer. Outside humidity is also 70% which makes things very sticky indeed. Dewpoint is just below 20 degC, which is very high. The barometer is dropping like a brick though, so expect some rain and possibly thunderstorms later.

17:56  Now getting VERY dark. Thunder can be heard and the wind is stirring up a bit. Looking really ominous now.

18:57  Street lights came on for about 15 minutes, it got so dark. Not as much rain as I expected. The sky has now cleared a bit. Just talked to a friend on the mobile, they're at Ullswater camping. Rain, but no T+L there.

Frequent lightning here, more as the storm seemed to develop further as it moved away to the east of us. Increasing CG after mainly IC earlier.

Satellite picture showing the huge supercell over North East England.

There was a dramatic drop in temperature here as the storm passed through : 24.0 degC at 1800 BST, reduced to 19.1 degC an hour later. The Dew Point has not reduced however, so there could be some fog later. 5.4mm of rain fell in that hour, it seemed the rain was being prevented from hitting the ground by massive updraughts. Other areas had much heavier falls.

BBC Report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4203474.stm

Clean-up as storms batter North

A mopping up operation is taking place across the north-east of England after severe storms and torrential rain swept the region on Wednesday evening. Electricity firm NEDL said at one point 98,000 homes were without power and extra staff were mobilised to deal with the emergency. Fire control centres diverted calls to Cumbria to cope with the demand. Passengers were forced to flee a Metro train on Tyneside after overhead power lines were hit by lightning. Firefighters waited for NEDL staff to isolate the lines before leading passengers by torchlight for one mile along the track to a waiting bus at South Wardley Farm, Wardley, Gateshead.

Lightning hits

Tyneside and Sunderland were among the worst areas affected by the torrential rain. Tyne and Wear Fire Brigade alone received almost 350 calls, most in the space of two hours. Electricity supply firms said distribution equipment had suffered about 100 lightning hits during the storms. About 5,000 homes remained without power in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North East on Thursday morning. Ann Walker, from NEDL, said: "There are pockets of customers scattered all over the region without electricity.
"There was lightning at 0100 BST Thursday so there may be more damage overnight and people have not realised they were without power until they woke up this morning.
"If you haven't already reported the loss of your supply, contact us.
"Direct lightning strikes are very dangerous and we had to suspend operations last night because it became too dangerous for our staff to work.
"But they were working before daybreak and will continue until we get everybody back on."

She added that all planned work had been cancelled while resources are diverted to restoring supplies as quickly as possible. The Environment Agency reported no major flood alerts but said localised flooding was likely anywhere in West Yorkshire and in the Skipton and Gargrave areas of North Yorkshire. Roads in north Leeds were badly affected with poor visibility and flooding reducing traffic to a crawl.

THE GALE OF 7th/8th JANUARY 2005

Quite a nice little gale last night wasn't it? Seriously though, I was staying in Chilton last night and a short walk around this morning revealed a lot of damage to fences, trees and cars, as well as ridge tiles missing. Den lost three and the one at the end of the street had nearly the whole ridge stripped and dumped in the front garden.

We were up looking out of the window at about 5:30 (waiting for the roof to go by) and could see flashes coming from the east, presumably high tension cables shorting in the wind, maybe on the main railway line.

ELECTRICAL STORM OF 11th SEPTEMBER 2000

There have been quite severe electrical storms in the North East ofEngland tonight with torrential rain at times. In Ferryhill, the storms started at about 2030 GMT after the weather became very muggy and humidat the end of the afternoon. Late afternoon Dew Point was 19 degC with RH at 92 %. Between 2100 GMT and 2315 GMT lightning flickered almost constantly in all quadrants of the sky, mainly cloud-cloud at first but then some hefty cloud-ground discharges later. I rang a friend of mine on his mobile to see if he was watching the spectacle. When he answered, he said he was sitting in his car in Aycliffe Village. He said the rain was torrential and we observed the same lightning discharges from about 7 miles apart. While we were talking, a bolt came to earth about 200 yards from where he was sitting and struck a tree on the village green. He described the lightning engulfing the canopy of the tree with a 'blue electric shroud'. The tree didn't split, but the ground around the base was seen to be steaming after the strike.Two miles up the road is the Plastics Factory where we work on Aycliffe Industrial Estate. He said he could hear the site Emergency Alarm going off and it sounded for 50 minutes. Shortly after this 5 or 6 Fire Engines roared through the village from Durham on the way to the factory. The site emergency alarm had obviously been set off by a strike. It's unknown at the moment if any damage has been caused as they disable all public phone lines into the site when the emergency procedure is triggered. I'm dreading turning up tomorrow to see the effect this has had on our site computer network.I've seen all colours in the lightning discharges tonight from yellow, through orange to green and purple. There seemed to be some circulation involved with rain coming with a slight southerly drift, then ten minutes later from the north, then back to the south again. Rainfall at it's heaviest here at Ferryhill yielded 6.8 mm in 30 minutes between 2100 and 2130 GMT but reported to be heavier in Aycliffe. My next door neighbour finishing his 2-10 shift had to stop on the A167 on the way back as a nearby strike blinded him temporarily and took the street lights out at the same time, plunging him into total darkness before the next lightning lit his way. The lights are flickering again, so i'm going to post this before I need to disconnect the modem again for the night !

THE DELUGE OF 27TH JULY 1998

Yesterday saw rainfall which I've never seen the like of in Ferryhill before.

In mid afternoon it was noticeable that very heavy dark cloud had built up to the north of Newton Aycliffe (where I work) but there was no rain at Aycliffe before 5:00 pm.

Travelling home we were heading directly into the dark clouds and having travelled about 3 miles North we ran into the rain. Torrential rain made it virtually impossible to drive and within 15 minutes the drains were lifting. In the village of Chilton firemen were already pumping out
water which had inundated several bungalows to the side of the main road. The whole street was 6" deep in floodwater. It was about 2 miles further to Ferryhill on the main A167 road. Between the two villages there is a dip in the road which was rapidly filling up. We got through but not without difficulties. My sister was turned back when this area was totally impassable 15 minutes later.

By the time I got home (5:35pm) there was a torrent of water running down the bank at the top of my street. I couldn't get across the road for 20 minutes. Cars were being turned back from Ferryhill Station which was by now under several feet of water.

They are building a new extension to the Recreation Centre in Ferryhill. The foundations have just been dug and prepared, but building has not yet started. The foundations were filled to a depth of 8-10 feet with floodwater. Several bungalows were inundated and the fire brigade were pumping out until 10:30pm. A friend of mine has some video footage, although I haven't seen it yet. In addition to all this water we lost electricity for 4 hours.

Here are the readings from my Davis Weather Monitor II

Time    Temp    Hum     Dew Point      Rain    Bar 
15:30   17.8      84        15.1            0.2     1004.1
16:00   16.9      90        15.3            5.8     1004.0
16:30   16.3      92        15.0            14.0    1004.4
17:00   15.1      95        14.3            17.4    1003.9
17:30   14.6      96        14.0            19.2    1004.5
18:00   14.5      97        14.1            11.4    1004.4
18:30   15.2      98        14.8            0.0     1004.5

As can be seen, 31.4 mm fell between 4pm and 5pm and a further 30.6 mm between 5pm and 6pm.