Explosion! How a thunderstorm fooled a seasoned war reporter
Lightning storm so violent that Iraq veteran Rageh Omaar warned his Twitter followers of possible bomb
AS A journalist he made his name reporting live from the rooftops of Baghdad, amid the deafening roar of missile strikes with explosions lighting up the night sky.
But Rageh Omaar’s experience in 2003 Iraq was so profound that now when he hears a bang overhead he thinks “explosion” – not “thunder”.
The ITV international affairs editor this weekend mistook Saturday night’s massive thunderstorm for explosions, on a night of torrential rain and a barrage of lightning strikes which disrupted flights at Stansted and set fire to a house in Essex.
At 10.50pm on Saturday Mr Omaar, 50, told his 86,000 followers on Twitter: “Big explosion in #westberkshire area near #Newbury”.
Six minutes later the former BBC war correspondent added: “Big white flash then loud bang 5 seconds later between #Newbury and #wantage”.
He was, of course, describing Saturday night’s extraordinary thunderstorm, in which more than 60,000 bolts of lightning lit up the skies over London and the south of England.
The powerful storms, following an unseasonably warm start to the bank holiday weekend with highs of 80F (27C), turned the cloudy night skies purple in parts of the country.
Mr Omaar’s tweets raised eyebrows on Twitter, with several replies correctly guessing the cause of the flashes and bangs.
One person replied: “Have you been drinking?”
The reporter took a further six minutes to add: “My wife tells me it was a huge clap of thunder – hope she is right #Newbury.”
Yesterday, Mr Omaar told The Daily
Telegraph he had been busy watching highlights of the Champions League final on ITV News – which he often pre-
sents. He said via Twitter: “I was so engrossed in game I was unaware of storms til I saw huge flash outside window and seconds later bang. Given places my job takes me naturally thought it was explosion!”
Somali-born Rageh Omaar was one of just 100 or so journalists who stayed in Baghdad during the American-led invasion of 2003, becoming for millions of Britons the face of the war. His book about his time as the BBC’S Iraq correspondent describes the panic and desperation of the citizens of Baghdad in the run-up to war.
At Stansted Airport lightning had damaged aircraft fuelling systems, leading to delays yesterday as flights were cancelled or diverted. Passengers hoping to salvage their weekends away faced disappointment, with outbound flights yesterday and today already full, making rebooking impossible. In Essex, a direct hit from a bolt of lightning engulfed the roof of a house in flames. It took firefighters three hours to extinguish the fire in the Stanway home, believed to have been empty at the time. No one was injured.
Yesterday morning more than an inch of rain fell in an hour in parts of Wales and the Midlands. Flash floods left a major route to Birmingham impassable, with floodwater up to 5ft deep. Highways England was forced to close a flooded stretch of the M5 between Halesowen and Oldbury.
The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for heavy rain and flooding across Wales and central and southern England, which could see more thunderstorms. It warned of pos- sible power cuts, transport disruption, and flash flooding.