A Very Beautiful Storm

We went for a little walk and wanted to buy a few small things from a local supermarket. The weather was felt as it was congested. There were so may clouds in the sky and mo wind had made them stagnant. There was no rain though. So you felt a sense of suffocation with the heat. I guess in the past 3 days of the weekend it the temperature was fluctuating in a narrow range of 28 to 31 degrees C. We were waiting for a little rain all Mon. after to cool off but rather than a few drops we didn't see anything. 

Today more the clouds were seen in the sky so I took my raincoat in the morning. At noon it was clear again so when I went for my usual noon walk I only had my shirt on. On the way back from work and even earlier, the weather got dark again but nothing was coming down. When I reached home and was changing to get ready for our new skating class, the storm hit! 

It was so intense that it felt like being under fire of 50 mill. caliber machine gun or something similar(!) with this difference that 50 mil. cannot fire as fast. It kept going for 15 to 20 min. and then turned to rain. We had to go. So I went and got the car and we hit the road. Ambulances and Fire Engines were whirling everywhere there was a bit of traffic but we managed to reach our destination on time. 

Water level quickly raised in some of the streets, making driving difficult and dangerous at time. It was impossible for passer-byes to even walk! 

I'm sure there were a lot of damages. We saw a Honda with its rear glass smashed. On one of the underpasses a Mercedes had been stopped with its all indicators flashing. Our car magically survived. It actually got cleaned! I guess if we had put the hood up, we could have had the engine cleaned as well! It was still raining when we were going home from Olympic Oval but it was not that bad. 

(Photo, top: Hail in our balcony. Unfortunately I do not have anything else beside them to scale. They were not very big, maybe the size of a Hazelnut, some of them bigger but they hurt a lot when they hit because of the velocity!)