Where I am in Coventry didn't have it too bad; there was no hail in this part of the city. Earlier this afternoon I heard distant, constant rumbles of thunder; these died down but then everything went very, very dark. You just knew it was going to hammer it down. But then the skies brightened and I thought maybe it had passed; that's when the torrential rain actually began and we got another, closer, moderately loud rumble from that. The rain then stopped as suddenly as it started, but some time later there was some more light rain and I could hear distinct booms of thunder in the distance -- these sounded sort of like cannon fire, very muffled, short booms.