The rain this summer has been circling around us. While we are hearing folk to the South of us moaning about the wet weather -- and oh my goodness, after this week, they have every reason to be moaning. Bitching, even -- what an incredible storm hit Toronto!
We, meanwhile, have been watering the garden, the soil was that dry. The storm cells seemed to be extremely localized -- Huntsville or Bracebridge would get rain, while we stayed hot and dry. Back to the beach, everyone...
Until Monday early in the evening, when the thunder just kept coming closer. And closer. You could see the storm front, moving in down the lake like a thick gray curtain that blocked out everything behind it. That wall of water kept coming our way. I remember, as kids, when we got a storm like that, we'd stand on the end of the dock, waiting until the wall of water came across the Points, then we'd try to outrun it back to the house. Sometimes we succeeded. More often, we got wet. Storms really do move fast.
We would not have outrun Monday's downpour. And pour is the word.
We, By Brian's calculations from his rain-gauge, we got slapped with four and a half inches of rain in less than one hour. That's 114 mm. That's a bathtub and a bit... In short, that's a lot of water. It was a very localized cell -- in South Portage, and Dorset they reported being high and dry. We, meanwhile, recharged the frog pond in the pasture where we water-school the horses... repaired the washouts in the driveway, bailed the boats...
One thing with storms like this, they move fast. They come fast, they go fast. My Dad had an old saying "Hard rain short, Soft rain long." Which meant that the harder the downpour, the shorter the duration.
That's a deluge!
ReplyDeleteWe've gotten more than our share of rain here in the Ottawa Valley this summer, including one day, like you mention, where I could just see that wall of rain coming, and couldn't outrun it.