Heavy thunder-storms

My little temperature widget on the side of my blog predicted heavy t-storms today, and HEAVY T-Storms we are having right now! The rain is bucketing down. Good old NZ heavy rain! You may think this pic is a bit pixilated, in fact its the rain. The rain is coming down so heavily its bouncing up again off the tile rooves, to fall and bounce again, in an ever decreasing height.
The thunder cracks are right above us and the building has that thud as each clap echoes around. The electrical storms at night are rather spectacular, as they literally light up the whole sky in a varying shades of grey with the white lightening fork in the middle.
Why is the rain and the electrical storms so fascinating you ask?
The temperature is still so warm with increased humidity when the rain finishes.
Electrical storms come and go so quickly. Suddenly the black clouds roll in and suddenly they roll out.
Each electrical storm finishes so abruptly and within half an hour, apart from the street flooding, there is very little other evidence of a storm having passed.
Life carries on as normal. The students look up acknowledge its raining and carry on
Only silly Western woman rush to take photos and gawk at the rain on the roof tops.

At the moment the Saigon River is very high due to the typhoon that came through about 10 days ago, and the rain that they have had up in the northern provinces. More water in an already high water table creates flooding in some of the streets in the An Phu area where the big school campus is. An Phu used to be paddy fields but sprawling urbanisation and development has seen the area turned into residential. Modern houses are now being built with foundations about 40 - 50 cms off ground level to counter the flooding problems in the lower lying streets. For many of the shacks and older type dwellings over this area of the city, the rising water is definitely a real problem mostly for sanitation and sewage reasons. Poor HCMC and the residents enduring third world conditions in a situation many have little control over.