Niagara revisited

I don't write about the weather very often. I know it's supposed to be British to talk about it a lot, but for blogging? I don't think so. Unless it's extraordinary. Well this afternoon, it was.

In a moment of total awe I failed to take a photo of the deluge, or the longest and most violent hailstorm I have ever witnessed, but the memory will stay with me for a long time. So much rain that it overflowed the gutters back and front, delivering a sheet of water across my study window to almost rival Niagara. So much hail that the lawn turned white and the deck was completely hidden from view. When I left to pick Nikki up from work an hour later, there were still piles of hail beside the front path. When we returned 40 minutes later, two of them hadn't yet melted.

The good news: this was the first serious rain since I painted the damp patch on the study ceiling. After close scrutiny, there's no new evidence of damp. The roof held up!!

The bad news: all that water pouring onto the study window sills somehow found its way into the conservatory, saturating the dust sheet underneath my half-painted door and splashing up onto the door itself. Painting activities will have to cease until it's dried out. Rain stopped play, you might say.