The Rio de Janeiro area had just experienced its worst summer downpour in history — nine inches of rain in 24 hours.
Memories of Guangzhou's summer floods of 2010 remain fresh, while the loss of 22 people in Jinan city's "July 18 downpour" in 2007 is still keenly felt.
We were barreling toward Portobello Road in a cold winter downpour, headed for an arcade I'd been tipped about by my friend, the antiquarian Alexander di Carcaci.
His estranged wife was Swiss-Italian, he spoke the language fluently and came often to Rome on agency business, and was on the 64 that day, a thief's hand in his pocket, only because he had an appointment near the Vatican and got caught in a flash summer downpour with no cabs in sight.
While Mumbai has spent millions on its drainage system since then, last week an overnight rain about one-tenth as severe as the 2005 downpour brought traffic and suburban trains in many parts of the city to a crawl during the morning rush hour.
A summer downpour loomed, and the towering thunderclouds cast everything in a washed-out gray glow, like outtakes from an old black-and-white film.
Favorite moment: Calling the earlier downpour a "baptism," the Michigan-raised Stevens adroitly summed up the events of the day 15 minutes into his lush set by saying, "Nature's formidable and beautiful and we should be in awe and reverence in the beauty...
The 2005 downpour, which unleashed 6 inches of rain in about 3 hours, not only ruined basements but also damaged cars, broke water mains, washed away sections of road, flooded a wastewater treatment plant, and destroyed a sanitary sewer line, sending raw sewage into a creek.
High summer downpours interrupted by sharp sunlight.
Now and then it rained hard — brief summer downpours.
