This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 25/10/13
Rumble! Flash! Whoosh! Splash!
Well, that was freaky.
Got home just after two this afternoon, and settled down for my afternoon nap.
I was awakened from what was, in truth, little more than an extended doze shortly after three. The weather, which had been sunny around lunchtime, and still dry on my way from work, had turned dramatically. The sky (why do some people say 'skies'? We've only got the one which, bearing in mind what I'm about to tell you, is probably just as well) was leaden and there were ominous rumblings about.
Then it started. It's really quite unusual for us to have thunderstorms at this time of year (and it's certainly a lot rarer generally than I remember them being when I were a lad), and this one was in itself unusual in that there weren't that many flashes of lightning. The thunder, however, was more or less continuous.
This, however, was merely the entrée. It's a terrible cliché to say "the heavens opened", but it's difficult to find any other way of putting it. The rain came down like a curtain (perhaps a shower curtain, ho, ho!), and then like a solid wall of water. Within a couple of minutes, the road up the side of this 'ere house comprised two mighty torrents (one on each side); the drains didn't have a cat in hell's chance of coping with the flow, and the main road at the junction filled up with water to a depth - I would estimate - of about four or five inches. This didn't stop some of the stupider sub-species of homo automobilica charging through it, but I'm afraid none of them seemed to come to a well-deserved grief as a result.
It were right cataclysmic, it were, and it went on for a good seven or eight minutes before moving slowly north-westwards where it was aiming to dump what little might have been left on the good burghers of Chester. I do know that we didn't see an Arriva bus up here for well over half an hour afterwards, although their rivals at GHA - following much the same route - managed to get a couple of theirs through.
And then, bright sunshine through the remaining clouds, the drains started to deal with what water was left standing and all was tranquil again.
It's raining steadily now, about an hour later, but in a bog-standard fashion.
Weird, I call it.
