Thunderstorm occurrence at ten sites across the UK digitsied from the UK Met Office Monthly Weather Records (1884-1993)

This dataset contains UK Met Office Daily Weather Reports (DWR) from ten sites from the UK Met Office Monthly Weather Records (1884-1993), using the recently-scanned UK Met Office Monthly Weather Reports (MWR). The data are presented as is, with no attempt to provide any corrections or calibration. Approximately half the stations exhibit sharp drops in thunderdays at various points between 1960 and 1990. Comparison with nearby Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) stations suggests the low thunderdays are the result of changes in observing practice, rather than genuine changes in thunderstorm occurrence. These potential data issues limit interpretation of the long-term trends. DWR contain extensive logs of UK thunderstorm activity, in the form of thunderday observations. To date, only a very small fraction of these data have been digitised as part of the MIDAS dataset, and exclusively after 1950.