The warm weather of the past weekend brought about some showery rain and thunder, and it got me thinking about the spectacular and severe thunderstorms that I have experienced during my 70 years on the planet, of which three have happened during the month of May, writes Ian Thomas.
I will now turn the clock back 60 years to Monday, May 17th, 1965. It was a typical spring day with showers and sunny spells, but one such shower developed into a full-blown thunderstorm during the early evening.
Such was the severity that many places were struck by lightning, including a bungalow in Everlands, Cam. The roof was damaged and Dursley firefighters attended with their 1955-built Commer appliance. In the same instance, the Yew Tree Inn at Woodfields (Cam) was flooded and engulfed in mud from the adjacent field, whilst the old Cam Co-op was similarly flooded. A busy evening for the fire service indeed. Hailstones piled up 5-inches deep at Everlands, as recorded by the (late) Percy Ashworth. I also remember losing power at home and television aerials struck in that storm, and I was then only 9-years-old.
A similar storm occurred on Friday, May 12th, 1967, although not quite as severe, but nonetheless caused lightning strike damage in Slimbridge.
A severe thunderstorm in the late afternoon of Wednesday, April 27th, 1983 saw a lightning strike on the south-west pinnacle of St Georges Church, Upper Cam. The whole piece of masonry came crashing down onto the footpath below – fortunately no one was hurt.
Fast forward to July 1995, an all-round good summer with abundant sunshine hours and the best since 1983 with the mercury into the 30s Celsius. However, a storm developed in the late afternoon of Monday July 10th, 1995, and this was spectacular for all the wrong reasons. Horses were killed in Cam and Stinchcombe, property on the Bovis estate in Cam was damaged by lightning strikes and much of Dursley had no power for several hours. A full 29mm of rain fell in 40minutes according to the late Peter Bailey’s records. Had it not been for this, 1995 would have been our driest summer on our records dating back to 1971, and therefore 1976 is still in gold position.
Moving on to May 2005 and another, almost tropical-type storm happened on the afternoon of Saturday May 21st. The storm arrived mid-afternoon and the winds around it gusting to over 60mph. Hailstones pounded down and my wife, Jill, and I were at Coaley Peak watching it all unfold. Once again, hail piled up several inches deep on the verges and we saw the evidence of this at Cambridge and Cam. This time the new Cam Co-op was flooded and the Dorothy Perkins clothing section cordoned off to the public. A house in Stonehouse was also struck by lightning, plus a tornado reported.
Finally, here is a lightning strike with a difference albeit further afield. On a day in July 1980, the 14.32 Leeds to Plymouth train was making its usual call at Derby during a spectacular thunderstorm. Lightning struck the Mark 1 buffet coach in the set and damaged all the electrics within. The coach had to be removed from the train, and it eventually departed over one hour late. Thankfully, in all the above-mentioned storms, no one was hurt or killed.
