Bay City Tribune

I drove into one of the fiercest, rain-swollen electrical storms I've ever seen, as I returned home Thursday night after attending a funeral in Kerrville.

This was just south of Columbus and I'd been watching this monster light up the skies as I drove east on I-10 toward that city.

Once I turned south on Texas 71 at Columbus toward home, I was in the middle of this system that produced long, vertical bolts of lightning every few seconds.

Then the rain came.

The big drops splattered the windshield and, in hardly any time, my truck's high-speed wiper wasn't up to the task.

What traffic there was at around 8:30 p.m. Thursday had been reduced to a 5-10 mph crawl.

I trailed a guy pulling a boat who decided he had to come to a complete stop every 10 seconds or so.

In my never-diminishing capacity to stay calm amid this land-based tropical storm, I said a few words of uplifting suggestions for Mr. Boat Puller.

On the other hand, it isn't hard to pass someone who stops every 100 yards or so on the highway.

Since Van Vleck sub-varsity teams had been playing in Columbus that afternoon and that evening - the JV game was called for the storm - I wasn't the only Matagorda County resident stuck on that stretch of the road Thursday night.

I really couldn't believe how heavy the rain was.

Given how rain-deprived we are down here, I got to thinking how much we could use this rain = as long as I could beat it home and watch the show from a window.

While I thought the storm might follow me south, it didn't and played out a few miles south of Garwood.

Just as well, an online weather Web site showed the Columbus area only got .39 of an inch from that unstoppable torrent of rain.

Still, that comes as close to a gully-washer as we get nowadays.