Dear Lubbock Meteorologists, Rud Is Not A Thing

I think our meteorologists here have a weird fascination with introducing new weather terms, some real and some no-so-real.

We all laughed when we heard the term "gustnado". The combination of "gust" and "tornado" seems practically invented for the shock value. We were wrong, and "gustnado" is actually a thing. How long it's been a thing still seems to be a bit up in the air (see what I did there).

We still have people here who object to the term "haboob" as well. They'll say, "back in my day we just called 'em dust storms". Well, that's correct Billy Bob, but a "haboob" is a special kind of dust storm with special characteristics.

Now over the past couple of days, I've seen the term "rud" or "rudd" dropped into headlines as if someone was testing it out to see if it could be a "thing". Sorry, but it's not.

Lubbock (and I'm sure a few other places) have this phenomenon where we have a dust storm then some rain sifts through it giving us some dirty, or muddy rain. Well, someone thought they would do word math and combine rain+mudd to equal "rud" or "rudd".  That is what agitates me.

"Rud" (we'll skip the other spelling going forward) gives the wrong idea of what is happening. Rain is not mixing with mud and then falling on you. Rain is mixing with dirt, then becomes mud that falls on you. It's not mud getting wetter and then falling on you.

All this is that the correct term for the droplets would be some word combination of rain+dirt or rain+dust. Yes, I'm saying, "rirt" or "rust" make more sense.

Still, even having boiled all of this down, I don't think this is a thing. And just as the mean girls said, "stop saying fetch, fetch is not going to happen", I will say, "stop with the rud, rud is not going to happen".