It’s been a glorious week of sunshine for the UK as we’ve sizzled in hot temperatures, but for some parts of the UK, the blazing hot conditions are going to turn to torrential rain and thunderstorms.
Depending where you are in the country, the next few days could be more scorching heat or you could be set to face immediate heavy downpours with thunder and lightning, according to the latest Met Office forecasts, after a yellow weather warning for thunderstorms was issued by the meteorologists.
Those living in an area with rain forecast are being urged to prepare their cars for significant downpours as the heatwave turns to rain. With the sunshine and heatwave conditions giving way to heavy rain, it’s very easy to get caught out by the sudden intense rainfall.
But one YouTuber, Simple and Fast, has shared a trick that ‘might save your life’ if you’re driving in heavy rain.
The bizarre hack involves rubbing a cut-in-half potato across your car’s windows.
First, take a potato and cut the potato in half. With the inside of the potato’s cross section now exposed, rub the starchy innards across the windscreen almost like you’re trying to scrub it clean using the potato.
When that’s done, the windscreen will become aquaphobic, resisting water.
Using a piece of masking tape to demo the trick, she divided the windscreen in two and rubbed the potato only on the left hand side, before chucking a bowl of water over the car.
She then explained: “As you can see, the right side has drops on it while the left side has none.
“This is ideal for days where it rains hard and you know that the windows fog up.”
The Met Office forecast currently says: “Whilst not all areas will be affected, heavy showers and thunderstorms may develop in places during the early hours of Thursday and into Thursday morning, perhaps merging into some larger areas of rain. Where heavy downpours occur, 20-40 mm of rain could accumulate in less than an hour, bringing the risk of some surface water flooding. Hail and lightning will be additional hazards.
“Further scattered heavy showers and thunderstorms are then likely to develop on Thursday afternoon and evening across portions of central and eastern Scotland in particular. These will be rather slow-moving, potentially giving isolated accumulations of 40-60 mm in an hour, with a higher likelihood of some impacts from surface water flooding. Showers and thunderstorms should slowly decay during the mid to late evening.”
The yellow warning for thunderstorms currently cover all of Scotland, parts of Northern Ireland and parts of northern England.