We English are obsessed with the weather, of course, but I did find it most unusual at about 3:30pm...
Most of our weather in Nottingham comes from the West. Here on the East of the Pennines is much less wet than in Manchester et al (I recall seeing a sign in a shop in Blackpool saying “Is it raining?”. I popped my head inside just to be certain and, sure enough, all that the shop sold was umbrellas). I still need my raincoat in Nottingham, but it is much drier than Manchester.
If the wind comes from the East, then that often means cold, cold, cold (bloody Siberia, thanks a lot).
And that is mostly that: Westerly or Easterly? Apart from the odd tornado (never seen one myself, though torrential rainstorms/hail are common) not much more to say. Until today: I have zero idea what was going on:
It was plain blue very high up, with the odd, widely-spaced cirrus cloud. That cloud was almost stationary, possibly west to east (normal direction). However, that was just the first of 4 sets of wind.
Much further down was typical cumulus cloud, travelling quite fast, though east to west. It was fairly widely spaced, so the sun kept getting to the cherry trees in the gardens at the rear of my house.
The 3rd set of wind & clouds was the oddity:- also cumulus, also widely-spaced & also travelling due-east to west, but travelling so fast that it looked like a speeded-up cinema film. Except that I was watching it in real time, and this stream of clouds was moving under the 2nd set of clouds.
Then the 4th stream of wind, at ground level (or rather, tree-top level, as all the houses all around shielded the ground). That was possibly a little slower than the 2nd set of clouds (same direction) and nowhere near as fast as the 3rd set (thank goodness, else the house tiles may have been ripped off).
I have seen clouds moving that fast just once before, and it was about 6 months ago. I was in the same location, although the clouds were moving from north-east to south-west. Just one more thing to say, which is that there have been pots of rain falling in the past couple of days (from a Low Pressure zone in the North Sea) and that only stopped this morning.
--------- Alex Kemp