Living on an island and having sailing as a hobby means that I like to keep an eye on the weather and emerging weather patterns. Normally this just takes the form of keeping an eye on the wind, pressure and precipitation forecasts for races.

Recently, however, with the start of the summer storms season I’ve started following the movements of thunderstorms across the UK and France with the help of the Isle of Wight Storm Tracking website.

Just before going to lunch today I checked on the storm site and noticed there had been a couple of strikes over the Cherbourg peninsular and over Jersey. As I was walking towards Cellar Door for lunch I looked over towards France and saw the tops of some big Cumulo-nimbus clouds and I thought “Wow… just over there is a big storm, but here I am walking in the sun”.

Despite being a software engineer and working with the latest technology, I’m always amazed and how much data is available, live, about the world around us, how it is collected, and how we take it for granted. I find it incredible that someone on the Isle of Wight can detect storms over France and relay that information to me so that, as I sit here eating my lunch, I can watch a storm unfolding on the horizon… amazing!

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