Remember I said thunderstorms in the U.K. are nice, tame little beasts? (That’s not an exact quote, but it’s in the spirit of what I wrote.) Well, on Friday Tom D. posted news of a big honkin’ thunderstorm in Cambridge: 200 lightning strikes a minute, flooding, hail the size of—well, I’ve always thought claims about hailstone size were questionable. You know, hail the size of lemons, of basketballs, of taxicabs. But I did find a picture of a handful of hailstones next to a pound coin and if they weren’t exactly the same size, they were big. They’d have hurt, so why quibble?

So there’s my sort-of retraction. Thunderstorms here can be big and tough if they want to be and, Tom, would you keep them up your way? Thanks.