It seems that I was wrong, 'monsoon season' is not over. After a perfect week of sunshine last week a very hot weekend and a hot sunny days at the beginning of the week the rain came back with a vengeance yesterday evening. It was uncomfortably hot and late afternoon we had a brief shower which cane as a relief, it was so hot that I wanted to go and stand in the rain to cool down, but unfortunately I was busy at work so I couldn't do that . At about twenty past eight I was at the station waiting for Robbie because he was having a bad day and struggling to cope with the pain in his legs. The sky darkened and the heavens opened, it only lasted for about twenty minutes but it came down so hard that many roads including those in the station car park flooded (the water soon soaked away afterwards). By the time Robbie came out of the station the rain had more or less stopped. I thought his pain and the bad weather would have put him in a bad mood, but I was wrong. He was very happy, because lots of people had admired his new and rather splendid pink Lego brick cuff-links.
As we drove home we encountered huge puddles and several flooded roads. The road where we live is quite high up and not prone to flooding but the drains couldn't cope and when we got home the road was flooded just beyond our house. The people from the houses opposite were all out trying to stop the traffic because the water from the road was flooding down into their houses. Thankfully our side of the road was fine.
I had a slightly later start than usual this morning, usually I am embarking on my first journey of the day soon after 6.30am but today my bed was warm and comfortable and it was a bit of an effort to force myself into action to face a wet and windy morning. Robbie was also running late, moaning that it was raining hard and his waxed jacket would be too warm, so he would have to get soaked, it was apparently my fault because I stopped him from buying the 'flasher' mac that he had his eye on earlier in the year.
It must have been almost 7am when I left the house and the rain was torrential and I got soaked just running to the car. I was a bit surprised to find that several sets of traffic lights were not working, but I didn't think much of it. The rain was much more manageable within a few minutes. Robbie rang me shortly afterwards to say he was stranded at the station, trains in both directions were at a standstill. I didn't think anything of it until I took Sam to school and drove past Abington Park it was strewn with huge branches and there were leaves and debris all over the road. Laura and I commented that we didn't think it had been that windy, but I continued to notice wind damage including fallen fencing. I later discovered from the local news that we'd had a mini tornado!
http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/Chaos-as-mini-tornado-hits.3225455.jp
