Sorry, big derailment of subject here:
The author described 40cm of rain, which was unusual to me, since we normally describe the rain in millimetres.
Then they translated it to American as 16 inches or 70 gallons per square yard.
The neat thing about 400 mm is, that it’s also 400 litres per square metre.
And it’s also crazy much, my heart goes out to Valencia.
What a rainfall