I live in Cardiff, Wales since 2001. While it is raining quite often here, I have never seen lightning or thunder.
Any explanation?
Guess you’ve not been in the right place at the right time. The July 3, 2001 Thunderstorms and their catastrophic effects in Mid-Wales
I noticed the same thing when I lived in Brazil, oddly enough. It rained quite often, but there was never any thunder or lightning.
Until one night I was jarred awake in the middle of the night by the loudest and most continuous thunder I had ever heard. Really freaked me out. But that was the only experience I had with thunder/lightning the whole 2 years I was there.
Some places are much more prone to thunderstorms than others. I used to live in Dunedin, New Zealand which had plenty of crap weather, cold fronts, rain, snow, hail, but very few thunderstorms. Then I moved to Darwin in Australia which has thousands of thunderstorms and lightning strikes during the wet season.
For a TS to develop you need very moist air at low altitudes, you also need the air to be unstable, this means that if given an initial push upwards it will continue to rise. The last thing you need is some kind of lifting mechanism to give the air the first push upwards. Sometimes a line of hills or mountains can help send air upwards or a hot ground surface can do it too.
I would guess that Wales generally doesn’t have conditions conducive to producing thunderstorms.