"Steve Thomas" wrote in
:

The last time this happened was on a Friday night in 1994 some time
around June when there was another torrential downpour and the same
parts of the school were flooded. If you do happen to recall that
storm and have rainfall figures for it I would be very interested in a
comparison with tonight's event.

24th June 1994 - I was in Reading at the time, can still remember it
vividly.

Someone actually has put a film of the storm from Essex on youtube, you can
see the "roll cloud" ahead of the storm with the vivid and frequent
lightning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-pyS9Cj2yU

Richard