A Toad Floater.....
Last week it was a close call with death by dust suffocation, this week death by drowning. For those not familiar with West Texas weather, dust storms and floods are close cousins, it just depends on how the thunderstorms grow and where they dump their much needed moisture. Tonight they chose to dump on us. I surmise close to 2 inches in just about 45 minutes. I'm not complaining about the rain, true West Texans never do for we know in August we'll be praying for anything we can get. But.....this storm started my roof leaking again after winter repairs, I'm just glad I was still up to set the buckets by the offending fireplace.

This storm started off as a small line of thunderclouds off to the west of us and grew rapidly, and came swiftly. At 8:30 p.m. it was barely a blip on the radar, and by 10:30 had grown into a storm packing 70 mph winds and dime sized hail. To give out of towners a scale, the distance on the map from Midland to El Paso is over 300 miles.

We genteel folk call these big rains toad floaters, but really the common Texas vernacular requires you to juxtapose two other letters into the "toad". The term originated in the ranching business, describing rains large enough to float the cow pies and start them drifting off out of the pasture. You figure it out.