In message , Waghorn
writes
I think a lot of it might be down to "luck" Jack.
..........
hit-and-miss nature of this type of weather.

--
Chris

Actually in this case a good forecast may not have been down to luck.As
outlined by Joe and in the
Estofex alert all the ingredients for forecasting the location and
severity of the storms seem to
have become available during the day.
I think credit should be given for the advances in 'nowcasting' storm
development in fields of
observing systems,modelling and conceptual understanding.
Of course there's a way to go and it can all be ruined in the last step
of communication to the
public.For tastes of the state of the art see eg

Precipitation diagnostics for a high resolution forecasting system.
This is the stage 3 report from
the Storm Scale Modelling project by Nigel Roberts 2003
Stage 2 report from the Storm-scale numerical modelling project by
Nigel Roberts
Stage 1 report from the Storm-scale numerical modelling project by
Nigel Roberts
at-
http://www.met-office.gov.uk/researc...ers/technical_
reports/fr.html
and
http://www.env.leeds.ac.uk/csip/oct1...entations.html

I'm not convinced that it was well forecast on this occasion. All the
emphasis on the forecasts I saw during the morning was that it was the
SE of England that would catch the torrential downpours, explicitly
during the evening rush hour. That didn't happen. The relevant batch of
storms passed further to the east. The forecast weather did occur, but
it occurred in the wrong place!

I hope that the science of meteorology doesn't advance in my lifetime to
the point where the time and place of thunderstorms can be accurately
predicted. That capability would remove a great deal of the wonder from
the subject.

Norman.
(delete "thisbit" twice to e-mail)
--
Norman Lynagh Weather Consultancy
Chalfont St Giles
England