IN 2011 Rick Perry, then Texas’s governor, and now a presumed Republican presidential candidate, devised a policy to help tackle a severe drought. “Under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas,” he formally did “hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.”

It is not clear whether Mr Perry’s successor, Greg Abbott, will now call for prayer for the end of rain. But given the weather the state has endured Texans might think him justified. Between May 23rd and 26th, a holiday weekend, parts of Texas and Oklahoma were deluged with as much as 11 inches (28cm) of rain. Large chunks of Houston and Austin were flooded, as were tens of smaller cities. At least 19 people were killed across the two states; thousands of homes were flooded and hundreds of cars left abandoned, piled up in a foot or so of murky water on the motorway.