Here comes the rain again. An unusual sight travelling into London on Thursday morning: the landscape in misty precipitation. The rains returned with a vengeance, in Hitchin at least. Nothing to speak of in London but when I returned that evening I admired a particularly dramatic cloudscape and sunset as the train approached Hitchin. 

 As I walked from the station I noted a good deal of surface water on the streets and a fine layer of silt everywhere. Must have rained heavily I thought. In fact there had been an astonishing deluge in the middle of the afternoon lasting about twenty or thirty minutes- flash flooding all over town and the Hiz burst its banks in several places. (not to mention my father's kitchen floor becoming a puddle when the outside drain overflowed)

 A friend described sitting in her garden; it began to rain so she went inside. Then torrents with a roll of thunder that didn't stop, just kept rolling for the duration of the deluge. She said she had never heard that before.

 Looking at the aftermath my sense is that more rain fell in Hitchin in half an hour than in any other short period during my lifetime. And this after the hottest, driest summer since records began...