After a pretty miserable wet lunchtime, the sun came out and I went to
do the weekly shopping dressed in T-shirt and jeans at 3pm. Got off the
bus at 4pm coming home, and stood in the bus shelter for a couple of
minutes thinking about it. And a good job too, when all Hell then let
loose!!! 3.6mm of rain in 10 minutes, setting a new record rainfall rate
here of 23.4mm/hr. Previous record was about 17mm/hr. Managed to walk
the 400 yards to home without getting wet.

What made this unusual though was the accompanying thunder. Directly
overhead with the bangs (4 of them) coming a lot less than one second
after the flashes. Normally the storms nestle themselves in the Nene
valley a couple of miles to the south. Pitsford (2 miles north) missed
it by all accounts, but the M1 (7 miles west) was in serious trouble for
about an hour, with stationary traffic for a lot of that time.

jim, Northampton