Deluge (and a little bit of antediluvian)

I'm going to take a small vacation away from old sounding words to discuss a word that had a significant impact on my life recently. Last Friday, I went on a camping trip to help support my friends' Odyssey project. It was quite entertaining, and informative, as intended. Then, we were supposed to spend the night in tents or in makeshift shelters made from ropes and tarps.
I have no idea if it reached as far as Conway, but if you were in the Petit Jean area, you'll know that we chose the absolute worst time to attempt such a thing. As night fell, it was as though the skies themselves were rent asunder, and we found ourselves caught within a deluge of ice-cold water hammering upon our flimsy shelter with a force the likes of which could scour the Earth clean of its sins as the air above was burst and torn apart with volleys of unforgiving lightning and thunder, agents of nature sent to purge this world of the human taint once and for all. As we laid helpless, mewling like babes within our woefully inadequate protection, we were shown the true folly of our decision as our canvas failed against the depredations of wind and rain, and we were all caught in an azure wave the likes of which had not been seen since times antediluvian.

In summation, yeah, it rained a lot.

So, to pick one of the words from this list at random, all of which are appropriate, lets go with "deluge."

By the AHD, as a noun, deluge means a number of similar things: One meaning, appropriately for my tale, is "A great flood," or "Something that overwhelms as if by a great flood". It can also mean "A heavy downpour," which is also appropriate. It has one very specific meaning, however, from the Bible, meaning "the great flood that occurred in the time of Noah". This, too, is appropriate.

It's etymology is not overly complex. It comes from a Middle english word of the same spelling, which meant "flood." This word came from Old French, which in turn got it from the Latin word diluvium, a form of the word diluere, which means "to wash away." We also get dilute from this word. Diluere comes from dis-, meaning away or apart, and -luere, meaning "to wash". It is theorised that luere could come from leu()-, an Indo-European root meaning "wash".(AHD)

Also, as a side note, the word Antediluvian, the use of which will fufill my old word quota for this, comes from Ante-, before, and diluvian, which has the same stem as what has been discussed here. Literally, it means "Before the flood", and refers to something so old that it must have been around before the Biblical Flood of Noah.