First rain

The weather forecasts have been predicting a rainstorm which is due to hit on Thursday morning and evening, then lightening up. In reality, Thursday morning was overcast, but by lunchtime the clouds had disappeared and it was quite hot. I went to bed early as I have had a very tough week and my eyes were hurting.

At about 10:30pm, I was wakened by a very strange sound, as if someone was moving wooden tiles around on the small balcony outside our bedroom window. Then the rain started. The balcony has a roof consisting of bamboo and plastic which does not let the rain through - but makes a sound when rain falls on it. And what a sound!

I have on my mobile phone an application which I originally loaded in order to measure how much noise a worker makes, close to my cubicle. He is a big man with a loud voice who speaks Russian, which I find extremely distracting. Normally his voice is in the 45-55dB range, but it has passed the 60dB mark and maybe hit 70bB.

The noise from the rain last night reached 70dB, which the application describes as 'busy traffic, vacuum cleaner', so of course it was impossible to sleep at this stage. After at least an hour, the rain eventually weakened, making it was possible to sleep again.

There were puddles everywhere this morning, but clear skies. The sun is shining now and probably causing all the water to evaporate, so by this afternoon there will be few signs of the heavy rain. I haven't seen yet the report of how much rain there was*. In Israel, we don't have the various types of rain that Britain does - drizzle, a polite rain, medium rain or heavy rain. We just have heavy rain, which isn't too good for the ground, as it quickly becomes saturated with water and can't absorb any more. This means that a fair amount of last night's rain will find its way to the sea without being absorbed into the soil. A shame.

* About 36mm, which is about 5% of the annual rainfall.