TEN years ago it was the day the rains came down and kept on coming and coming and coming.
The freak weather was all the more freaky because it occurred in the middle of the summer, Friday, July 20, 2007.
“Of biblical proportions” was a fair description of the waterfall-like downpour and the floods it brought to the Stroud district and beyond.
After the wettest June and July on record since 1766, a 12-hour period a decade ago saw 78mm of rain fall on Gloucestershire, causing flash flooding.
The M5 came to a halt with more than 10,000 motorists stuck between junctions 10 and 12.
Surveys reported 3,966 houses had been flooded with 825 households – 1,950 people – evacuated. Twenty schools were damaged, about 500 businesses were flooded. Three people died.
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