Copenhagen Flooded

Being born and raised in a tropical country, thunder storm is no stranger to me but here's something new. In midst of a fine summer day, the Danish weather forecast predicted 20mm of rain but heavy thunder storm with more than 150mm downpour in less than half an hour happened instead and turned Copenhagen into a 'canal-city'.

I was out visiting a colleague's place outside of Copenhagen and it was impossible to walk across the street without getting totally wet. I hopped from regional train to S-train, and then to bus, all without getting myself too wet (with a struggling to survive umbrella) but the final stretch home is the real killer. 

Corners of the streets and road surfaces are over-flown with water because the drain system simply can't handle so much water at a time. It's not a pleasant feeling having to walk through pools of at least ankle depth water knowing that those are actually rain + drain water. And thanks to the wind, I'm half wet after a short 50m walk. 

Compare to some motorist /cyclist, I guess getting soaking wet is not such bad situation. Some insurances don't cover water damage so aside from the inconveniences caused, there's also the money matters in account. The rain then followed by hail, Tivoli and Palads had to shut down with fear of electrical disturbance. Lighting, thunder and heavy rain is a bad bad situation for an amusement part.

Networks were down, a lot of house hold lost land line telephony, highways are shut down, traffic is heavily affected. It's not like the movie 2012 kind of disaster but it's enough to cause a lot of trouble for Copenhageners. Well, on a lighter side, Danes has a very literal way of naming such down pour. They called it skybrud, translate to cloud breaks; I find it cute (the name of course, not the situation) :)