For Bren and Laura, 2004 was an exciting year weather-wise. During the course of the year, we covered in excess of 5,000 miles travelling around the UK in search of the best weather events this country had to offer, and we were not left disappointed.

This page sums up the year for us, by displaying a photo or two from the most significant weather events we encountered during each month. Just remember one key fact if you want to see exciting weather.... the weather's not there for you, you're there for the weather! Go get it!

January 2004 - Yorkshire Snow
A cold northerly blast swept across the country towards the end of January, blanketing many central and eastern parts with snow. Thundersnow was witnessed in many parts of England, but we'd headed to North Yorkshire for a weekend. 48hrs of snow, and several stranded episodes on the North York Moors later, our trip to a snowy Yorkshire was the highlight of our weather year! We also filmed the whole weather event for BBC's Countryfile, which was aired last spring. You can view the various videos in our video section.

February 2004 - Snow In Slough!
An isolated snow shower roared in across Slough (when we were still living there) during a morning mid-month. Nowhere else in southern England saw the same shower, which developed near Northolt and become huge as it moved overhead. The snow shower gave about half an inch of solid cover in less that half an hour, before crisp, blue skies returned from the north-east.

March 2004 - Filkins "Supercelll & Tornado
The now infamous storm which is our largest storm-chasing prize to date, this isolated, severe thunderstorm in March has now all but been accepted as being a low-topped supercell. Although it'll never be proven without Doppler radar, everything else about this storm in Oxon screamed 'supercell'. The cloud structure, with its streaming anvil radiating from central core (first picture), frequent and vivd lightning, large hail (see second photo) and many other characteristics were awe-inspiring to watch. As we were watching the storm, just a mile away a tornado was ripping through the villages of Filkins and Broadwell, causing significant damage (see last couple of photos). A truely monsterous storm! Full report in our special supercell report.

April 2004 - Worcester Megastorm
After a whole day's chasing, which took us from London to Derbyshire, we eventually ended up all the way down in Worcestershire. The distance was worth it though, as we encountered one of the best thunderstorms of the year. The system became multicellular, perhaps even an MCS, and grew to fill most of the west Midlands. It was as close to a Spanish Plume storm that we had in 2004, with almost nil sky visibility, deep purple skies, ongoing torrential rain and vivid lightning. Sadly, we took few photographs, so this CG is actually an analogue video capture. To view a short video of a near miss with lightning, visit our video gallery.

June 2004 - Thunderstorm Structures!
Plenty of showers and thunderstorms affected southern parts of England during the month of June. This storm, roaring in to the south of the North Downs near Guildford exhibited superb structure. On this photo alone, there's a marked gust front lowering towards the ground on the left of the image, complete with gustnadoes. There's also a well-defined precip downdraft behind this, and mammatus bulging from the streaming anvil.

July 2004 - Lincolnshire Thunderstorm
Our chasing exploits took us to the Plains of Lincolnshire, where we intercepted a cracking summer thunderstorm. Amidst torrential rain, lightning every ten seconds or less, and superb cloud structures, we managed to get some great images. Here's just a couple, including a lightning bolt as we neared the storm's core, and a double rainbow as the solid rain sheet moved away.

August 2004 - Swindon CG
An explosive couple of days across southern parts of England, as thunderstorms let rip. One particular storm, which we intercepted, was over Swindon, and we were able to get some great footage of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes just a few fields away from us!

September 2004 - Welsh Mammatus
During mid-September, we embarked on a storm chase to the west Wales coast. Meeting up with fellow storm enthusiast John Mason, we didn't actually see any lightning or thunder. However, as the remnants of a large storm moved overhead, we captured some of the most stunning anvil mammatus we've ever seen!

October 2004 - Felpham Tornado
During the early hours on a mid-October morning, we were woken by a violent thunderstorm passing over Weybridge, as the centre of a low pressure area and triple point moved directly overhead. Only hours earlier, the same storm system produced a number of tornadoes, including one in Felpham near Bognor Regis, on the south coast. Here, a garage lies in ruins after being ripped apart by the tornado, whose windspeeds exceeded 100mph during it's trail of destruction. Notice how the blue garage door has been blown inside the garage, then forced outwards through the garage wall and onto the garden lawn. The door used to be at the right-hand side of the garage, where the roof is now in contact with the ground.

November 2004 - Early Snowfall
The latter part of November was fairly cold, with some widespread evaporative snowfall across north Wales and the Midlands. We were also lucky enough to see some snow here in south-west London, although we had to venture onto the highest reaches of the North Downs to see it actually accumulating.

December 2004 - A White Christmas
As winds turned northerly for one day only, 2004 could not have finished in a better way! The classic Cheshire Gap opened up North Wales to frequent snow showers through Christmas Day and overnight into Boxing day morning. As well as a few centimetres of snow, I saw stunning clouds, thunder and lightning, hailstones and beautiful blue skies.

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