About 4am Tuesday morning we had the most horrendous rain and hail storm. It lasted about 20 minutes but managed to wreak havoc.

The hailstones were huge and they shredded the leaves of plants in my outside space and tore the flowers off. The rain mixed with the hailstones was nearly horizontal and the noise of the stones on the windows was quite frightening. I think we all thought the glass was going to break. 

I don't recall ever having experienced something as bad as this. I had water dripping through the ceiling in my bedroom (luckily not above the bed)!  My roofer popped by in the morning and fixed the problem which was caused by the hail and rain having dislodged the moss on the roof which then accumulated in all the wrong places and drove the rain under the roof tiles :(

It was depressing to see the damage in the garden. I couldn't bring myself to photograph it.  The plants are gradually healing themselves, thank goodness.

Here in London we have had the hottest summer since 2006 with temperatures over 26°C for three weeks and as high as 35.5°C! That rain/hail storm was the first rain in three weeks. By the morning the roads were dry and you would never have guessed it had ever rained.

Oh well, we can't complain about a lousy English summer. What's a few hailstones between friends!