FlyingWeasel

Looking in the direction of Heathrow. 28degC. Clear blue skies.

Hope the minimum number of flights have been affected due to the challenges with predicting the British weather.

shorthauldad

"Cancelled because of bad weather" appears to be slightly different to "cancelled because we think the weather might turn out to be bad"

simonrp84

There are thunderstorms just approaching the Southern coast of the UK, judging from their current path they'll be quite near to LHR in an hour or so.

Champagne please

What website are you looking at please? I am in Southampton and its been sunny all day, feel like I'm missing out on a "weather event"!

UKtravelbear

Yes there is a difference and if BA just cancelled off their own bat then they should indeed pay out.

But the cancellations this afternoon are based on ATC saying "we expect bad weather between these hours so are reducing capacity by X"

zkzkz

Since when does rain count as bad weather? Snow, icing, fog, I understand. But I've never heard of an airport having operational problems due to rain.

Kgmm77

I can't see anything North of Le Havre?

travelwithross

Electrical storms aren't just "rain".

buddman

At heathrow now. Blue sky and sunny. Nice one BA!

simonrp84

I have access to weather satellite data, it's not available online I'm afraid.
Here's a recent pic, as you can see some storms just off the French coast (near Le Havre) and some in the Southern UK. Heathrow clear so far:

Retron

I find it quite remarkable that the powers that be would order flights to be cancelled so far in advance over something so unpredictable... all of the weather models struggle when it comes to convection and trying to pin down exactly where storms will be even 12 hours out is nigh on impossible.

Last night proved that well - I was awoken around 3 AM by frequent thunder and lightning. I groggily went to the PC, looked at the radar and there was a mass of storms moving up from France over my part of Kent. The Met Office forecast at the time was for partially cloudy skies... it was only once the storms started easing that the model updated to show thundery showers for the next three hours!

NB, for those watching the Netweather radar you'll see the rainfall has crossed halfway over the Channel now. The intense storms are remaining near France, however, they're moving only very slowly northwards. For those without access to Netweather or a similar 5-minute product, this link should give an idea of what's going on:

http://www.meteox.com/gmapstatic.asp...om&x=246&y=277

Edit: free satellite link for EUMETSAT:

http://www.sat24.com/en/gb

gcuk

I'd be furious if my flight had been cancelled. It's 6.20pm and still a glorious summer evening 5 miles from Heathrow. A couple of light puffy clouds in an otherwise blue sky, no wind and about 25 degrees. Hopefully someone is feeling like a bit of a muppet for wrecking thousands of people's travel plans.

Sigwx

It's not so much the outbound timing that is the problem, more the return of those sectors.

mikeyfly

Down in surrey a few miles from Heathrow it's suddenly gone dark and windy... Storm imminent! Think they may have got the 16.00-18.00 timeframe slightly wrong

henkybaby

Enjoy. It's a Dutch site but I think most is pretty obvious.

http://europa.buienradar.nl/verwachting/bliksem