Month's worth of rain could fall in one day as UK towns brace for thunderstorms following intense heatwave

After a week of tropical weather which has seen temperatures push into the 30s for the warmest areas on the UK, the sun is set to break and make way for humid thunderstorms, hailstorms and downpours. The Met Office has already issued a yellow weather warning for thunderstorms covering areas in the south of England and the Midlands.

Th warning came into force from 1am on Thursday morning (August 1) and is set to last until midnight. The Met Office warned that the storms may lead to sudden flooding and disruption, with the possible risk of a month’s worth of rain (75mm) falling within just a few hours.

Deputy chief forecaster, Dan Holley added: “The Met Office has issued a thunderstorm warning over a broad geographical area but not all locations will see impacts. The most intense impacts are likely to be focussed on central, southern and southeast areas of England. Here some locations will witness torrential downpours, large hail and frequent lightning. A few places could see 50-100mm of rainfall in a few hours.”

Met Office meteorologist Simon Partridge added: “The problem is that the winds are very light as well, so where you see those heavy thundery showers, there’s not really much wind to blow them through as often as when you have showers and it’s a fairly breezy day – you don’t get much of the rain from one particular shower.

“Where those thunderstorms occur, that local area will probably get pretty much all of the rain that that thunder cloud is holding – so there could be very locally heavy downpours which bring along the risk of localised flooding and surface water problems for transport networks.”

While the skies look set to open up, temperatures will remain “very warm, very humid and very muggy”. Highs of up to 30C are expected in Hampshire, while it looks likely to be much more comfortable in western Scotland where the mercury will hit between 17C and 18C, the coolest peak of the day.