THE unseasonal warm weather reached a crashing crescendo in the early hours of last Friday morning as cracks of thunder and dramatic flashes of lightning lit up the skies above Alton – as this dramatic picture from Herald reader Ben Thompson from Four Marks shows.

A huge thunderstorm passed immediately over East Hampshire and south-west Surrey, as revealed by the live lightning strike-tracking website lightningmaps.org.

Ensuing power cuts left many people in the dark while torrential downpours caused flash flooding in some areas. Rail services across the South West Trains network were also severely disrupted.