"An Unfathomable Amount of Rain"

    You  know when even Noah would be praying for his life from too much water?  I think I heard a forecaster come up with it on the radio program, “The World.”

     The weatherman spoke of  “an unfathomable amount of rain.”  That REALLY caught my ear, and would have, I think, caught Noah’s if he happened to be tuned in to FM.
 
     The word “fathom” roots itself in the Indo-European meaning “to spread,” grew into Old English and other tongues to be the measure between two outstretched arms, solidified to become exactly 6 feet, and is ordinarily the measure used to plumb the depth of water bodies.

     From the weatherman’s tone, I don’t think he was being consciously ironic in the expression, but only thinking metaphorically:   unable to comprehend so much rain, it was “unfathomable.”