[KevinFromTexas]

We really need more frequent average rains to get us back to where we need to be rather than huge floods. The way I heard it described, which made some sense, was imagine taking a bone dry sponge, all hard and dry, and dunking it into a sink basin very fast and then pulling it back out. The sponge would be wet but wouldn't have had time to soak up a lot of water. That's what those huge rains do. We might get a ton of rain, but most of it just becomes runoff. That's why it floods in the first place. The ground can't soak up the water fast enough, so it just runs off. A slower rain of 10 to 12 inches over 2 weeks would be more what we'd need and would end our drought. I remember back in 2007 we had rain like that where the lakes were actually above flood stage. I remember it raining here nearly every day for 2 weeks. It was incredible. It wasn't even heavy rain, just slow steady rain. Of course if you get a heavy rain like we had back in October right on top of the lake it would simply fill the lake. It's when we get it over dry land that it just runs off and also evaporates before it can reach the lakes.