Why do we get thunderstorms after hot weather
Heatwaves and long stretches of hot weather are often broken by a thunderstorm in the UK - with glorious sunshine quickly replaced by torrential rain, thunder and lightning. The two vital ingredients for a thunderstorm are instability in the atmosphere and moisture, according to Grahame Madge at the Met Office.
Thunderstorms take place when there is more humid air in the system. They tend to develop later in the afternoon after the progressive heating during the early part of the day.
In 1976 the UK's heatwave and dry spell was occasionally interrupted by violent storms. Met Office archives reveal that "thunderstorms occurred in many districts" during the first half of July 1976, with heavy rain causing local flooding on several days.
On July 12 1976 a man was killed at Clapham near Bedford when the cab of his lorry was struck by lightning. The same day, 64.8mm of rain was recorded at Sudborough in Northamptonshire, while at Ashover in Derbyshire 15mm of rain fell in just 12 minutes.
Thunderstorms are created by the intense heating of the earth's surface, and are most common in parts of the world where the weather is hot and humid. The Met Office says thunderstorms develop when the atmosphere is unstable - when warm air exists underneath much colder air.
Thunderstorms are common occurrences on Earth, according to the Met Office. It is estimated that a lightning strike hits somewhere on the Earth's surface approximately 44 times every second, a total of nearly 1.4 billion lightning strikes every year.
Thunder is the sound produced by the rapid heating of air by a lightning strike, and lightning is a huge electrical discharge that flows between clouds, from a cloud to air, or from a cloud to the ground, according to the Met Office descriptions.
Within a thunderstorm there is huge capacity to suddenly release lots of moisture "incredibly intensively", Mr Madge said, describing the phenomenon as "one of the most dramatic and most intense" weather events that we get in the UK. When the conditions are created for a large volume of water to hit the hard, dry ground - caused by a prolonged dry spell - floods are possible.
Mr Madge said flash flooding can cause draining systems to become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of water. "It's because it's a high volume of rainfall falling incredibly quickly," he said.
In the UK thunderstorms are most common over the East Midlands and the South East, according to the Met Office.
Unfortunately for those facing hosepipe bans, sudden downpours of intense rain do little to help. The UK needs several days of gentle rain to soak into the earth, rather than a downpour that washes away quickly.