14th June 2002: Cloudburst!

[Weather-history]

Friday evening 14th of June 2002, England are playing Sri Lanka at Old Trafford. Play is suspended for bad light at 5.30pm and Mark Nicholas, the commentator, mentions the armageddon sky to the west. He wasn't exaggerating. What was to follow was I could only describe as a cloudburst.

During the late afternoon of the 14th of June 2002, a very strong cold front was pushing westwards across the country and this gave tremendous downpours across northern England with flooding and even a couple of tornadoes reported as the Torro newsletter mentions

http://www.torro.org.uk/TORRO/newsletter/june2002.php

Here's the FAX chart for midnight of the 15th of June

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2002/...cka20020615.gif

Here in west Manchester, the rain was unbelievable with roads turned into fast streams causing flooding and damage to road surfaces. Thunder and lightning also occurred but it was the rain that the talking point. Certainly few people who experienced it will forget it

Here's a website showing the damage caused by the downpour

http://www.brdw.co.uk/flood/flood.html