Recipe card: How to cook up a storm

After record-breaking heat across the British Isles, it's no surprise that all this energy produced a cluster of thunderstorms in its wake.

Thunderstorms don't actually require sugar, spice and everything nice, but rather moisture, instability and lift. Whilst they can be nice to look at, they can in fact be quite dangerous.

As a general rule, the dew point (the temperature to which the air needs to cool to for dew to form) needs to be at a minimum of 12C.

Below this mark, conditions become unfavourable for thunderstorms, though elevated storms tend to cope with lower dew points than surface-based ones.

Yesterday, for example, dew points were incredibly low given the heat, around 6C in London, but lifted by around 10C to 16C through the evening, when thunderstorms also arrived.

This occurs when a parcel of air is warmer than the air surrounding it. This warmer air in the lower atmosphere then rises, cools and condenses to form clouds. The instability refers to a difference between the temperature of rising versus sinking air.

Without this ingredient, deep convection and thunderstorms cannot be supported.

Lift is simply what causes the air to rise. There are a few different types; orographic lift (over mountains), frontal lift (in the passage of weather fronts), convergence (when surface air collides) and convection (from the sun).

This lift is consequently the mechanism that releases instability.

Combine all key ingredients above, and you will have the perfect recipe for a thunderstorm, which is what we have recently experienced across parts of the British Isles.

If you bake the storm for long enough, you might be able to dig in with a fork of lightning, and receive a clap of thunder.