Thunderstorms

 I thought the storm on Tuesday was scary!

The one we drove through yesterday was terrifying!

Not just the lightning strikes, but the amount of rain that came down. About 26mm of rain in less than an hour. 

The area that we were driving through tends to be lower.  A lot of the roads dip rather dramatically, that's okay when there's no rain, but with the sudden, intense storm we had yesterday, the result is localized flooding!

I took some videos, not very good as I was panicking! I think I got the inside of the car more than the storm! But they'll give you an idea of what it was like.

This was some really incredible driving by Mikey. The road we turned onto was completely flooded; if we had driven through it, the water would have been in the engine. We turned down the side road to go round and back onto the main road, but the side road was a lot worse. Mikey had to reverse back onto the road we had just come off. Fortunately, everyone was driving very slowly! My shouting is when lightning got very close!

We drove along the main road for a while, and I kept telling Mikey to just pull over. The area is industrial, with small factories and warehouses, but they were all lower than the road and flooded.

We finally found a convenience store where we could stop. This was after 4pm, and our first class starts at 5pm. Mikey decided that it would be better to cancel the class. It was really dangerous being outside and most of the kids walk to the class! He called one of the mothers, who offered to relay the message to the other families. 

We got to the community center alright! As we pulled up, the storm stopped. There was no slowing down of the rain; it was heavy, then nothing! 

I really don't like this kind of storm. If we are at home, I can cope, but being out in it was awful!

One thing that is unusual is the low humidity recently.  Even with all the rain we've had over the past few days the humidity is below 50%.  Most years it feels like a sauna when you are away from the sir conditioning! This year, so far, it's been more bearable! I hope it stays like that!