Rain - a hurricane on the way?

I was talking to a very nice builder today who may be building our extension if we ever get the money together to mak it a reality. He is working on an extension in Killearn at the moment and kept getting weather updates from a friend of "Heather the Weather" - according to her we are going to get the tail end of a hurricane this week. Brilliant.
The rain and the still warm weather has done a lot of damage to the flowers - the gladioli are worst effected as their petals seem to be very easily spotted by raindrops, and all those tightly packed petals in a bud are very prone to rot. The very large dark dahlias - like Rip City in the photo - also have a tendency to go mushy.
On the other hand the orange Bon Binis, the pink Fuschiana and the dark red Tam Tam are all perfectly rain proof. It is useful to know as I have been lulled by the beautiful summer into forgetting that we live in a very wet part of the world.
The other lesson is - STAKE THE PLANTS PROPERLY - I never do it, I always have the illusion of getting away with it and then a gale comes along and batters branches off the cosmos and flattens the sunflowers. But it is such a boring job