In this issue of Weather

We begin this month with an examination of lightning over the area surrounding the British Isles by Derek Elsom, Sven‐Erik Enno, Andrew Horseman and Jonathan Webb: ‘Compiling lightning counts for the UK land area and an assessment of the lightning risk facing UK inhabitants’ on p. 171. Derek and his co‐authors present the difference between data for the ‘UK service area’ and ‘UK land area’ to give a more realistic estimate of the risk of lightning strike for the British population than is often presented in the press. The results are informative in this well‐presented paper. On p. 179, we move onto ‘Daily weather in Dublin 1716–1734: the diary of Isaac Butler’ by MG Sanderson. Weather diaries kept in the early days of weather observation are a valuable addition to our knowledge of long‐term climate, and Isaac Butler's records were meticulous, albeit non‐instrumental. There is a long‐standing need for instruments – located at specific sites – that may provide early warning of lightning – especially for aviation, construction and sport. On p. 187, Alec Bennett describes a new system to assist in the production of lightning warnings in ‘Warning of imminent lightning using single‐site meteorological observations’. Although the effects of the monsoon are very variable in Pakistan, its effects are important, particularly given the shrinking glaciers of the western Himalaya. In ‘Evaluation of statistical downscaling models using pattern and dependence structure in the monsoon‐dominated region of Pakistan’ on p. 193, Firdos Khan, Shaukat Ali and Jürgen Pilz look at this variability using observations and down‐scaled data from large‐scale climate models.