THUNDERSTORMS turned the sky black and dumped more than an inch of rain on the county causing chaos in little more than an hour.

Flash-flooding cut off roads and inundated some homes and businesses across Worcestershire after a huge storm moved across the county on its way north yesterday.

The fire brigade said they had taken 156 calls in Worcestershire and Herefordshire between 8.30am and 3pm yesterday – more than 30 calls for each of the first two hours and called in extra call handlers to deal with the volumes.

They attended 34 incidents, rescuing eight people including two people trapped by floodwater in their cars near the Morrison’s supermarket, and two others, and a dog, stuck in a van in a residential area, all in Bromsgrove.

As weatherman Paul Damari explained, the problem was not the amount of rain (24mm), which is not unusual for this time of year, but the fact it fell in so short a time.

“It’s caused a lot of flash-flooding,” he said.

“But for this time of year, it’s not unusual to see thunderstorms.”

He predicted more thunderstorms in the next few weeks.

In Worcestershire, Worcestershire County Council’s highways teams cancelled all routine work to handle dozens of calls to problems with flooded roads in Bromsgrove, and Rubery, with a handful from Worcester, Droitwich and Stourport-upon-Severn.

In Redditch, a retaining wall collapsed by the Staples store car park on the St George’s roundabout shutting the ring road, while underpasses were made impassable. Meanwhile the A4103 at Bransford, near Worcester, and stretches of the A38 between Wychbold, near Droitwich, and Bromsgrove were badly affected, as were parts of the A449, the A4133 at Ombersley, and the A438 Ledbury to Hereford Road. Driving conditions on the M5 were also appalling. And in Bromyard and Droitwich, drivers and motorcyclists in Tagwell Road and Queen Street had to deal with a spate of blown manhole covers, causing several flat tyres, after water overwhelmed the drains.

In out-lying areas, localised flash-flooding hit places such as the Fir Tree pub at Dunhampstead, near Droitwich.

“We are surrounded by water,” said landlord Martyn Perrins. It just started pouring through the front door.

“There’s nothing you can do really but wait for it to go back down.”

The fire service also had to deploy fast-water rescue boats from Hereford and Worcester, joining crews in Hereford and Ross-on-Wye in Llanwarne after a call to a car getting stuck in floodwater.

In Worcester and Malvern, the impact was more limited and drains seemed to have coped better, although cellars were flooded together with the Cattlemarket car park, Worcester, and Cowleigh Road, West Malvern.

Group Commander Phil Russell, of the fire service, said: “The rainfall was sudden and heavy, and caused pockets of localised flooding across Herefordshire into Worcestershire.

“It was an exceptionally busy morning but we coped extremely well, with our newly-trained first water responders [specially trained water rescue fire crew] making a huge difference as we responded to a variety of flood-related incidents.”

Mr Damari said humid, warm conditions in the atmosphere had created perfect conditions for the storms.

“We had a storm in South Wales, and that set off more and more storms, heading north. Coupled with only a light south westerly wind, the storm when it came took a good few hours to travel over Herefordshire and Worcestershire.”

He said the weather system had been localised, with Fladbury, near Evesham, suffering hardly any rainfall at all.

“We can expect more of the same, now there’s a set pattern in the weather,” he said.