On Wednesday, July 1, 1914, Bradford was subjected to a terrific bombardment of thunder and lightning, accompanied by “one of the heaviest rainfalls in the city’s history,” according to that Friday’s Bradford Weekly Telegraph.

The First World War had not yet erupted in Western Europe, but the tenor of the newspaper report suggested that at least one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had cantered out on reconnaissance that afternoon.

“Once more the air was heavy with dark heat and dreadfully oppressive. The sky was once more overcast with an ever-deepening gloom, a hateful heaviness that seemed to weigh palpably upon the spirit.

“The atmosphere, supercharged with cruel crisis and suspense, seemed tense with the anticipation of a tremendous doom. A mighty menace of fierce riot and raging violence dwelt in that sombre and sultry stillness.”

And then the rain started. At about five o’clock the storm intensified, “as though some enormous empyreal tank had first leaked, then burst above our heads.” Empyreal means heavenly.

“A veritable cataract it was that seemed to descend with a crushing uproar upon the city. The waters leaped high upon roof and pavements, dashing a mist of spray into the air to mingle with the dense and obliterating downpour.”

More purple prose follows before he gets to the point. “It was not long – a matter of minutes merely – when the news of devastation came... the beck was out.”

Stones in roads and alleys were lifted, the railway subway at Shipley was flooded, the railway embankment at Bowling burst. Old Junction Station was flooded and trains on the Great Northern Railway were held up for an hour.

“The most serious case of damage by lightning was the shop in Rawson Place, which a witness declares to have been struck as though by a thunderbolt.” The shop in question may have been Messrs Carter & Harrison.

The flooding of cellars was serious because 100 years ago they were workshops. The paper suggests that men went on working as the water rose up to their armpits. The storm’s severity seemed unreal.

“There was, indeed, a nightmarish feeling about it all, as you watched this fierce assault, so primitive and, for us, so unparalleled upon this stronghold of civilisation.”

The estimated cost of the heavenly assault was estimated at £100,000 – more than £8 million at today’s values.

The report doesn’t say whether the cost included “the hundreds of bottles of disinfectants” distributed by Bradford Corporation’s Health Committee to alleviate the “filth, sludge and slime” deposited in the city’s flooded cellars.