For the past few weeks we’ve been enjoying long, hot, dry summer days. However, it isn’t summer in Britain without a bit of rain and, thanks to a thunderstorm, that was provided yesterday afternoon.

It began to spit down as I got back home for lunch after a trip to Lewisham library. As I was grabbing the washing off the line I began to hear the rumble of approaching thunder and, before long, a heavy deluge was beating down – rain and even hail.

I am fortunate that my job is fairly flexible and I had some time in hand. Rather than having to rush back to work and getting soaked in the process (I’m confident that an umbrella would have proved fairly useless with the weight of the downpour and the gusting winds) I took some photos instead, which capture some sense of what it was like.

Click on the image to see what I came up with. There will certainly be no need to water the garden again for a little while and a bit more water saved in the butts for when it does dry out again.

Tags: british summer time, rain, photos, flickr