Its old news now, having happened two days ago, but since then we've had a series of power outages because of exploding transformers and so on and I have been unable to find time in the office when the electricity was live to report it to you. It seems settled now so here goes.
On Monday evening at about six o'clock, after we had been waiting for forecast thunder storms all day, the sky clouded over, lightning began to flash all around us and the associated thunder got nearer and nearer. Suddenly the rain began and came down in sheets. Roofs in the farm buildings and farmhouse were tested to the limit and later we discovered some leaks. Surface water flooded drains unable to cope with the volume and the farm drive was like a river. I didn't venture out to look at the crops but when I did I counted myself lucky that we did not appear to have any damage apart from flooded patches in low lying areas. Those patches are still flooded today. It takes a while for 33mm falling in an hour to disappear.
But I didn't realise just how lucky we had been. Less than a quarter of a mile from three big fields of our sugar beet and a fifty acre block of wheat a swathe of hail cut crops to smitherines. Barley ears were cut off and smashed to the ground; wheat seemed to stand up a bit better but ended up bruised and bent; sugar beet leaves were mashed to a pulp. The beet will prabably recover but not without serious loss of yield and sugar. The cereals are too close to harvest and too badly damaged to allow anything other than a salvage operation, come harvest.
I'm not sure if the victims of this carnage were insured. If they were they will be making sizeable claims. If they were not they face a much reduced return on the affaected fields. We haven't had anything like this in Norfolk for years.