NO-ONE is ever greatly surprised when Scottish summers bring dark clouds and rain, but the weather conditions on the first two days of July 1968 were severe enough to warrant front-page headlines. “During the past48 hours,”said the Evening Times on Wednesday, July 3, “more than 8,000,000 tons of rain - more than twice the total June rainfall- have fallen in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. Squads are still working in the city this afternoon to clear up the debris of overnight flooding.” Floodwater had put some 1,200 telephones in the Glasgow area out of action. Two blocked roads - one south of Ballantrae, the other the Douglas-Cumnock route near Glespin - had just been re-opened to traffic. In Glasgow, a night of torrential rain had left some streets flooded to a depth, in places, of seven feet. Duke Street (above) did not escape. Hundreds of stranded motorists had made distress calls to police and motoring organisations. Teenage shop assistants in the Saxone shoe-shop in the city’s Argyle Street donned wellies to clean up after the basement was flooded. Roads in Lanarkshire and elsewhere were affected by surface water. In Portpatrick, a landslide blocked drains, and a “backlash from the seas” led to 2,000 gallons of water being pumped from one shop and house. And all of this at a time when Glasgow,was still repairing properties damaged during the great storm that had struck in January.
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