I was about to leave when it began to rain. A hard rain. A shroud of rain. The rain beat against the windowpanes, the rain beat down on the roof. The rain enveloped us in a deafening cataract.
Basically, it was pissing down.
I was standing in the porch because it was raining—my leather jacket is useless in the rain. It rained heavily all day, and the rain continued all night. The next day it was still bucketing down, low clouds and squalls of driving rain. Many wore rain boots and jackets, angling their umbrellas to fight the wind and rain, splashing through deep puddles. Rainwater guttered the hillside, rain poured down, pitting the bare earth, rain banked the soil up behind the gate, watered the garden. Rain beat the trees, trees that sheltered the cows. A shelter for hikers, too: the rain permeated her anorak, rain dripped from the brim of his old hat. (You have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy hiking in the rain.) Rain made conditions all the worse. Rain stopped play. The game was abandoned because of rain—heavy rain turned the pitch into a mud bath. The rain put the kibosh on our beach party. The rain poured down, day after day. Two weeks of nonstop rain. Six inches of rain fell in a twenty-four-hour period. More than thirty inches of rain fell in six days.
At one o’clock, the rain ceased. I went for a long walk. The sky was half-blue, half-fleeced with white clouds. The soil was saturated. A mist rose out of the river. It was cold, and there was a continuous sighing in the treetops. The storm grumbled in the distance. There was a rainbird somewhere quite near, singing its sort of sad song even though it didn’t even look like rain.
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Collins COBUILD Primary Learner’s Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Macquarie Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms