Message #9027

[martinastro]

That's a beauty Paul and very nice structure too!. Thanks for sharing that one.

Seen some spectacular scenes this evening. I thought the convective activity would have died by this time..but not so!. From Maghera there where stunning updraught towers over the Sperrins of huge size and solid structure. These put me on the alert. My Mum and I decided to go to Ballyronan Marina on the NW shore of Lough Neagh to take our Dog out for a walk. As we arrived we could see a nasty looking cell which had crossed the Lough and was now nearing the E shore with precip falling below. The rear of this cell had nice structure but with messy scud and cu rags/inflow cu. Some time after 20.00 BST both of us observed what looked to be a beefy funnel cloud which was hiding within the scudy mess. It was thick, tubular like a bloated worm with a nice bend downwards towards the Lough, it lasted for about 5 min's then retreated into the clouds again. I have images which I have yet to take off the camera but they are extremely poor because they were hand held with a zoom lens in dark conditions. So focus issues etc will kill the images some what.

After this we could see great convective updraughts catching the low light of the Sun with a fantastic primary and secondary rainbow against the flanks of intense coloured clouds reflecting on the water. On the way home after 21.00 there was a huge cell which dominated the sky. The belly of this thing was black with precip curtains, but below it was a huge solid black wedge reaching down to the ground. It looked like a huge tornado, our view was obstructed by houses and trees while on the road but eventually we pulled up when we got a clear spot. It turned out to be a large updraught tower at the flank of the cell, possibly even with a wall cloud, but I can tell you, that was the most frightening looking sight I have ever seen to date!!!. I thought I was in the US for a time, I'm sure everyone on the road saw that too and were amazed. So, if any tornado reports come in from NI this evening from members of the public then you know it wasn't a vortex, or at least it wasn't on the ground when I seen it. Have some images and video taken under poor conds which don't do justice to the scene at all. What an evening of stunning and scary clouds, mother nature was really showing off!