Rain

I can't believe I've gone 6+ weeks without saying something about the rain in India. It's psycho crazy scary, to put it simply.
There are 3 seasons in India - winter, summer, and monsoon. Winter, apparently is like 60-70 degrees and it runs from approximately late October to February. Summer runs from March to June. Apparently it's just insufferably hot. Like, 120 degrees hot. I am not as excited for summer. July through October, then, is monsoon season. Now one thing about the precipitation here...in the US, in every season there will be some precipitation. It rains sometimes during spring, summer and fall, and in the winter it just turns to snow. In India, according to my family, monsoon season is the only one where it rains.
It's really hard to describe how hard it can rain here, so I'm going to start with how often. If it doesn't rain in a day it's an extremely unusual day. If it doesn't rain twice in a day then it's an uncommon. I would say two rainfalls a day is about the average. Maybe 2.3 or something.
Now not every rain is ridiculous. There are many times where it just kind drizzles. Other times it rains pretty much as it does in the US. About a fourth of the time it is harrowing and torrential, and probably about once or twice a week a week there is a rainfall that can only be described as apocalyptic.
I wish that cameras had a good way to photograph how hard rain is falling. It would be very helpful in this instance.
About four or five years ago there was a horrible flood in Surat. Surat is a city prone to flooding because it is built around the banks of the Tapi River. So in this flood the water apparently halfway up the walls in my living room. It rose all the way up to the bridges that cross the river. My family abandoned the ground floor and they all camped on the second floor and the roof. Many people were killed (I'm not really in danger - it was, I believe, mostly slum-dwellers who have no high ground to get to).
The last four days have each featured one of the apocalyptic variations of rain. There was one last night that was the worst yet. Apparently it's going to do the same all of this week and on Thursday there is going to be a rainfall worse than anything I have yet seen, where (and I kid you not) it can fall an inch a minute. The entire family smells a flood but they say it won't be as bad as the one five years ago.
Well, in four days I'll have a report on whether or not I survived the flood-pocalypse.