Holy torrent batman!

Despite an unseasonably cool patch upon arrival, our first May visitors have had extremely nice weather.  It has been generally sunny and warm during the days.  And the only serious rain came last night after everyone was already inside for the night trying out Guitar Hero.

Rain in the summer here isn’t frequent but when it comes, it comes like Tibetan protesters to an Olympic torch – hard and in great numbers.  Last night the island was pummeled with a wicked rain storm featuring wicked rain, lots of thunder and lightning.  The storm only lasted a couple of hours, but in that short amount of time it was able to create flash floods and forced some roads to be closed. 

picture courtesy of the royal gazette

The storm yielded an impressive 66.8mm (2.6 inches for you imperialists) of rain, the bulk of which came in about 90 minute span. Since there is very little drainage or storm sewers the city was flooded rather quickly as streets turned to canals, knocking parked scooters over and actually sent them floating down the street.  Who knew that scooters could float?  Anyway we also took some video of the rain which you can check out below, later we went inside and began plans on building a large ark but then we couldn’t resist Shawn’s behind the head guitar solo while playing La Grange by ZZ Top on Guitar Hero, and decided to drink some Bailey’s instead.  Thankfully the rain stopped and the weather for the next couple of days looks spectacular…

Here some video which really doesn’t do the rain justice.  It looks grainy, it’s not – those are the sheets of water pouring down