Had the IT geeks in the office today sharpening pencils, making jokes in acronyms and basically telling me we need new servers.

After some huffing and puffing and the threat of their newly sharpened pencils being probed into my ports (their words, not mine) we have now dished out a new server set up to take Metcheck into the next generation.

From this evening, we will be moving across to the new set up which consists of 3 load balanced servers and a new database server. We will be locking the site from 9pm as the transition takes place and will update this message if times change.

Say goodbye to the slow Metcheck and hello to the new turbo charged one.

The last couple of days have been quite electrifying...literally!...

We have read some great reports on the website of the many heavy showers and thunderstorms that people have witnessed over the last couple of days. Some great pictures have been posted as well.

The weather is set to take a turn for the worst (yes it is possible!) with the mixture of sunshine and showers giving way to more persistent rain as we say hello to another area of low pressure approaching from the southwest.

Parts of Southwest England, Wales and Southern England will see the brunt of the rain from this next system in what is expected to be a miserable day indeed on Wednesday. More northern parts of the UK will see some brightness and should escape the worst of the weather, at least for a time, wet weather will arrive here during Thursday.

Get the cameras ready again because the end of the week and into the coming weekend sees a likely return to a mixture of sunshine and heavy, thundery showers...all in all excellent weather for ducks!

Metcheck Tools
- Next 48 hours
- CycloneTrack
- RainRisk
- Warnings
- Weekend Watch
- Lightning
- Rainfall

 Hurricane Bertha
Added : Tue 8 July : 08:35 BST

Bertha was upgraded to a Category 3, major hurricane overnight in what is the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season.

There is some uncertainty over the developments of Bertha within the longer term due to potential changes in track and intensity. The recent upgrade to a major hurricane comes about due to favorable upper level winds and warm sea temperatures and these ingredients are expected to continue for the next day or so before a gradual weakening takes place.

At the moment it looks as though Bertha will make a turn towards the northwest or perhaps even north which is likely to mean there will be no direct hit to the mainland US, however the island of Bermuda could get a direct hit from Bertha in the coming days.

As ever when these tropical features come north into the North Atlantic it is always interesting to see what impacts on the weather they can have and with the remnants of Bertha likely to make an appearance in the western North Atlantic in about 6 or 7 days time it is worth keeping an eye on developments.

Metcheck Tools
- CycloneTrack
- Hurricanes