RAIN AFTER DROUGHT

Evening Star, Issue 20372, 2 January 1930, Page 14

RAIN AFTER DROUGHT

A CHARMING DESCRIPTION A charming description of the onset of heavy rain -is given by a contributor to ‘The Times’ in an article on the welcome change that came at the end of September “ to save the gardens and the meadows at their last gasp in a historical drought.” He describes the piling up of clouds and as the gloom deepens, the first big drops fall, sounding in the loaves and spattering on roofs and door steps. But they arc only forerunners; they cease and the air falls still again . . . , . But the heaven lowers again; once again the sudden pelt patters and dies away. Then,_ in a moment, the distant hills, which had been dark and iron-hard against the sky, are changed to a misty silhouette and wholly fade away. The “ precipitation ” on ' its way has reached the edge of our prospect ; and as it advances, plane after plane of the landscape, wooded ridge or ploughland slope, vanishes under the sweeping fall. It brings the wind with it, and the drops of its onset, no mere skirmishers this time, drive with a hiss through the trees : and lash the window-panes. The daylight goes an hour before its time, buried under the vault of massy vapour. The battalions of the rain-cloud, which seemed to wait all the day for a long-deferred signal, have at last got got their orders to advance. It is time to' go indoors and shut the house against the storm, and to listen to_ the concert of sounds—splashing, dripping, gurgling—of water falling upon the works of man. There need lie no apprehension now about the ventured prediction; the mercury, tapped onco more, staggers down _ another 10th; and darkness settles in for a night of pouring rain.