Weird Rain

[gabriel]

On Saturday I was travelling back from Gloucestershire to Yorkshire. Earlier that day I'd bought a car and had taken the opportunity to see friends who were nearby, just over the Welsh border. About 5.30 pm I was still in Gloucestershire heading north when I noticed what I can only describe as a curtain ahead of me in the road. It was made up of an intense sheet of rain in conditions that were otherwise clear. The rain drew an exact line across the road that didn't appear to move and I watched in anticipation as I drove closer to it.

Once inside it was like being in a car wash. The wipers couldn't cope with the deluge even on high speed and I reduced speed from about 55mph to 15mph. After thirty seconds or so, the car left the rain band and the road was perfectly clear. I looked in the mirror and the same stationary opaque screen of rain was still there. I've seen some extreme downpours but have never experienced anything like that. If it weren't for the duration and situation, a four lane section of highway in a wooded cutting, I would have sworn it was artificially created.

[Slorri]

Could have been artificial, like they do in Texas and Russia, cloud-seeding.

[gabriel]

Given the summer we've just had in the UK, I don't think cloud seeding was on the agenda. It was weird, but not as strange as this:

Storm clouds can be foreboding and sometimes dangerous, but it's not often that one appears to be deliberately malicious. It was a summer morning in 1975 that school teacher Tom D'Ercole of Oyster Bay, Long Island, had a very bizarre experience with a cloud that seemed to be after him. D'Ercole was about to get in his car when he saw a small, dark cloud hovering above his house. "The cloud seemed to move and slightly enlarge as I watched it," the science teacher said. "This basketball-sized cloud floated back and forth across the peak of the roof, changing in shape from a small globular mass to a larger ovoid and finally becoming an abstract, muticurved, dark, vaporous 'something.' It finally measured about six feet in height and one and a half feet in width." Then things got really strange. As D'Ercole watched in fascination and puzzlement, the cloud appeared to inhale, form pursed lips, a spit a stream of water at him and his car - drenching them both. After a few moments, the spray ended and the cloud disappeared.

[fls]

We get those kinds of rains frequently here (SE United States). I agree they are weird, but not artificial as far as I know.

Linda

[anonymous]

I was waiting in my car once and an ambulance with its sirens going sped by. In its wake there were some large white flakes blowing around. I thought it was bits of paper stirred up by the wind from the ambulance passing. However the flakes grew in number until I realized it was snowing. It was just a squall that lasted a minute or two but initially it was totally confusing that the ambulance was moving just at front of it like that.

[mahela]

those rains are quiet rare. but one way or the other you should know that when it rains it doesn't cover the whole area. so there is a point where is no rain. and rain

[happyknownothing]

I understand completely why you would see this as strange, but I've seen this phenomenon many times here in Thailand. The first time I experienced this it did seem a bit magical. I don’t know why it is so common here but so rare in places like the UK.