When it rains it pours: the Tianjin annual flood

Located a couple hundred kilometers East of the Gobi Desert, Tianjin has been suffering a drought for several years. Blame the approaching desert, the several-times rerouted Yellow River or Climate Change, but Tianjin does not get much rain. The average annual rainfall of Tianjin is around 550-680 millimeters (21-26 inches), 80 percent of which falls during the Summer, according to information from the tourism bureau. I'm pretty sure most of the yearly amount fell today. Take a look at this video Aaron Forisha, a friend and fellow Nankai University teacher, filmed. The rain started around 1:15 p.m. after the afternoon sky turned dark as midnight. A friend who was downtown at the time the storm started, said a storefront window actually shattered during the storm, though he wasn't sure if it was due to thunder, wind, lightning or armageddon. Throughout the day, the sky would morph from bruise colored skies, to rainforest fogs to downpours you just couldn't see through. It was so spooky, I was ready for it to rain frogs.

**This is my first blog post in months. I've been trying to wait for the Internet cops here to unblock blogger blogs, or Youtube for that matter, but I think we'll all be waiting several more months. In the meantime, this video was too timely to wait.