August afternoon thundery shower merging with thunderstorm

A relatively brief fringe view of a major thunderstorm. A broad belt of showers and thunderstorm persisted over mid and north Devon from about late morning, aligned WSW to ENE, the cloud movement being from WSW to ENE, so that the band didn't move significantly laterally, though in the afternoon it broadened somewhat, so that its SSE margin came close enough to Exeter for an ongoing grumbling of distant thunder to be heard when there wasn't any close traffic noise.

At that time a smaller, separate thundery shower developed, directly approaching Exeter, and it started giving the odd lightning strokes as it came overhead, that then expanding and becoming annexed by extension of the main storm, before the lot very gradually retreated.

Thunderstorms are quite a rarity in Exeter, so for me each storm is a very special event.

I made this recording on the afternoon of 15 August 2022 — I could perhaps regard it as my two-days-late 80th birthday celebration! :-)

For almost all of the c. 1½ hours of the 'raw' recording, from my second-floor SW-facing bedroom window, there was a background of distant more or less continuous thunder (informing one that Exeter (Devon, UK) was missing a really severe storm by a gnat's whisker), with a few nearer lightnings from the independent shower that came over and then pepped up as it gradually moved away as part of the main storm.

All the receding thunder that's at all distant has a distinctive sound, without much spatial detail, because it's actually on the other (NE) side of this building, so that what we're hearing is largely the sound echoing off the buildings I'm facing (to SW).

As always, morning or afternoon, especially on weekdays (this was on a Monday), is pretty hopeless for my recording in the city centre, so I had to edit out most of the recording to get anything really acceptable. The birds heard here and there are seagulls (I think all herring gull), woodpigeon, and my immediate neighbour's budgies (I'd have preferred only wild native birds, but at least the budgies are pretty unobtrusive and fit in reasonably).

Advisory:
To hear this to best effect you need high-grade headphones, and to have the volume setting about 9dB above a sensible normal level for a realistic rendition of symphonic orchestral music. That's a trebling of the sound level.

The thundery shower just starting to release its rain. This is the point when I hurriedly set up the recorder. The main band of storm is just to the north, which is behind and off-right of this view.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested Windcut furry windshields (custom design), and it was placed on a Velbon Mini tripod with full extension of centre column, on my bedroom window sill, with the window as wide open as it would go.

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, and to compensate for 'alcove resonance' in the bass.

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!