For the last few days, the charts for the weekend have been suggesting
pressure close to 1024mb for the south, with a few weak fronts,
suggesting a couple of days of dry if rather cloudy conditions.
Today's newspaper forecast for central southern England said almost
exactly that.

So I went out today expecting the chance of any rain more than a few
drops in the wind being almost 0 %. So I was completely unprepared for
the two-hour spell of moderate and at times heavy rain which passed
over the Haslemere area early afternoon...

The current analysis (18BST) still suggests high pressure with
embedded fronts. So why was this front so active? What is so very
ironic is that the cold front ahead of the northerly on Thursday
passed through with almost no rain at all! I actually expected
Thursday to be a wet day but it was dry...

Ironically again it was the warm front of the system which produced
the rain. The cold front (I presume this has gone through now)
produced no rain at all but did cause a noticeable change from misty
murky conditions (early evening) to clear skies (now). And the rain on
the warm front was typical of that of a *cold* fromt: it seemed
convectional, stair-rod like at times, short duration and stopped
suddenly after the heaviest phase towards the end.

I suppose the moral of this is to expect heavy rain whenever there are
fronts in the vicinity, even if pressure is high....

Nick