The Weather Dogs at play

Well somebody certainly poked a big stick at the Weather Dogs yesterday!

I hear there had been some Quite Interesting weather down in the south during the morning, but up here it had been quite a nice day. A bit overcast, perhaps. But nothing to take note of. I had had a pleasant walk up to Collegiate at around 9:30 (for a meeting, grump, grump, grump) and a nice walk back. I had trundled over to the public library at lunch time to get a book about potatoes (I’m going to take it back today and change it for another one. It had lots of pretty pictures but no useful information). Not a drop fell on my head.

At about half past four, the clouds darkened and there was the sound as of a hundred pigeons tapping on the office window.

Shortly after, everything went black, and there was a bright lightning flash and then big, loud claps of thunder.

At twenty to, I went up to the foyer, ready to meet The Builder and Oscar for going home purposes. Sally, from upstairs, was sat by the door, reading a book. “You don’t want to go out there,” she opined. I looked out the door. She was right. It was raining in torrents. But how wet can you get, going from the door, down the ramp to the car? Answer: very! Water was dripping off me as I threw my basket in the back of Oscar and leapt into the car.

Visibility was almost zero.

Arundel Gate was like a small river.

Shoreham Street was like a very big river indeed.

Slowly, slowly, slowly we made our way along down to the main road which goes down through to Heeley, Woodseats and thence on to Chesterfield.

It was flooded.

Excitement reigned as a taxi decided it was sick of sitting about on flooded roads and came barrelling through a red traffic light and nearly took us out. We were, naturally, going very slowly so managed to stop.

The police, having obviously learned a lot from the Great Floods of 2007, had closed lots of the roads, including the Heeley Bridge on the main road near Freyja’s place. Inconvenient, but it drastically reduced the traffic chaos levels.

We found an alternative route – actually up along Abbeydale Road which wasn’t too bad.

The rain slowed. The roads where we were cleared of water.

Phew!

Then we got to the Dronfield bypass. The heavens opened again. The rain torrented down. The roads filled with water again.

We made our way slowly and gingerly to Chesterfield.

And decided to go along the round about back roads. There are roadworks on the Brimmington roundabout, so that is always slow. The railway bridge by the big roundabout always floods. Hady Hill always floods because of the volume of water pouring down the steep hill. Best to avoid all these places we thought.

And it seems we were right. The local news showed flooding in Dronfield, flooding in all the places in Chesterfield where we had thought it would be, traffic chaos all around.

Mind you – it wasn’t nearly as bad as the Great Going Home Flood in June 2007. It only took us twice as long to get home as usual, not weeks longer. And at least the roads were mostly passable.

There was no sign of Marlo when we got in. Ordinarily he is sitting by the gate when we get home. Not surprisingly he wasn’t yesterday. I went out and called him. He emerged from the shed, where the door wasn’t properly closed, and GALLOPED up the path to the house. He was mostly dry. Clever cat! (Although I'm not sure why he wasn't in the house.)

Woke up this morning to a glorious day. Sun shining. Birds singing. The Builder tells me there was a jay on the fence when he went down to get the tea.

And the back fence was steaming like a sauna!