Major storm brings thunder and lightning to Yorkshire

Major storms brought heavy rain, thunder, lightning and hail to parts of Yorkshire on Tuesday evening.

A number of homes were hit by lightning in South and West Yorkshire, though there were no reports of any injuries.

As the storms swept across the north, a nine-year-old boy died after apparently being struck by lightning in Blackpool.

BBC Weather believes there were an estimated 3,000 lightning strikes across the north between 16:00 and 00:00 on Tuesday.

Nikki Berry, senior meteorologist at MeteoGroup, which provides the forecast analysis for the BBC's weather services said there was also significant accumulations of hail in places, especially around Sheffield.

Ms Berry said the storms had begun to develop across the south Midlands and Wales on Tuesday lunchtime.

"These gradually drifted north through the afternoon and evening with a large cluster of intense thunderstorms developing across South and West Yorkshire through the evening."

Many people reported hail in addition to the thunder and lightning, however she said that was not unusual.

"Hail is in fact more common during the warmer months of the year as higher temperatures allow stronger updraughts within the thunderstorms allowing the hail to grow in size before becoming too heavy and falling to the ground.

"Intense clusters such as that which developed yesterday do form relatively frequently but any one region may only see such an outbreak once every few years."

The forecaster added the storms developed as a small-scale weather system moved north.

"This caused colder air in the upper atmosphere to overspread relatively warm and moist air near the surface.

"As storms developed, the cold air rushing out of the storms at lower levels forced more air upwards, causing further storm development, and sustaining the cluster of storms well into the evening hours."

Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected] or send video here.