On 1 June we decided to start the annual stint of house painting at our home and a section of guttering was removed in order to deal with the gutter board behind it. It was a beautiful day and the gutter was left off overnight to allow the paint to dry. You will all know what happened during the night – a deluge fell on Chipperfield! My rain gauge said 33.5mm. The area of roof drained by the missing gutter is about 18 square metres. A simple calculation shows that about 600 litres (132 gallons) cascaded from the roof and I concluded that my sins must have been greater than I thought!
For those who think that this must be Chipperfields wettest day, I checked my records which go back to 1982. I found that 33.5mm has been exceeded on six occasions, the wettest being a staggering 62mm (about 21/2”) on 23 September 1992. Since 1992 there have been 25 days when the rainfall has been greater than 25mm (1”). It is worth remembering that the 600 litres which washed my patio could have filled three