OPINION
COCHRAN, J.,
delivered the opinion of the Court in which
KELLER, P.J., PRICE, JOHNSON, KEASLER, HERVEY, and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.
Appellant was charged with Possession of Cocaine with Intent to Deliver. He filed a pre-trial motion to suppress claiming that the affidavit supporting the search warrant did not contain sufficient facts to establish probable cause to search his garage. The trial judge denied the motion to suppress, but the court of appeals reversed appellant’s conviction and held that the trial court abused its discretion in not [57]*57granting appellant’s motion to suppress.1 We hold that the affidavit did support the magistrate’s finding of probable cause.2
I.
The evidence at trial showed that, in November of 2003, an informant notified Fort Worth police officers that appellant’s uncle, Eduardo Cantu, was selling and transporting large quantities of cocaine in Fort Worth. Numerous narcotics officers began surveillance of Cantu and followed his car to a house at 4816 Goddard Street in Fort Worth. This house belonged to appellant. The officers watched Cantu drive into the driveway and pull around to the rear of the house next to a detached garage. They saw Cantu get out of his car and walk into the garage. A short while later, Cantu came out of the garage. He was carrying a package in his right hand. Looking around nervously, Cantu threw that package into the backseat of his car and drove away.
One of the undercover surveillance officers followed Cantu for a few blocks in an unmarked car. When he saw Cantu fail to use a turn signal, he contacted a nearby uniformed patrol officer and asked that officer to stop Cantu for the traffic violation. During that traffic stop, Cantu gave his written consent to search his car. The patrol officer found a brown paper sack containing three brick-like objects that looked like packaged cocaine on the floor board of the left backseat. Cantu then told both the patrol and undercover officers that the three kilos of cocaine in his car came from the garage on Goddard Street and that there was more cocaine at that garage. After arresting Cantu, the undercover officer radioed the other surveillance officers, who were still watching the Goddard Street house and garage, that Cantu had told him that there were at least ten more kilos of cocaine at that location.3
One surveillance officer then left to obtain a search warrant. The remaining officers could hear “tool noises, metal on metal banging” coming from the garage. The officers therefore decided to secure the scene to prevent any destruction of evidence. They opened the garage door and saw appellant and two other males taking apart a tool box on the bed of a pickup truck. The officers had the three males sit in one area of the garage until they received confirmation that the magistrate [58]*58had issued a search warrant. They then searched the garage, found forty-three kilos of cocaine, and arrested appellant.
Appellant was indicted for possession of more than 400 grams of cocaine with the intent to distribute it. After the trial court denied appellant’s motion to suppress, a jury convicted him, and the trial judge sentenced appellant to forty-seven years’ imprisonment.
The Fort Worth Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling on the motion to suppress, concluding that the affi-ant’s “mere belief that the residence on Goddard Street was being used to store large amounts of cocaine is not enough to support the issuance of the search warrant.”4 It also concluded that the facts set out in the affidavit,5 while they “may lead to a suspicion that contraband might [59]*59be located at the residence,” did not suffice to give the magistrate “a substantial basis for concluding that a search would uncover evidence of wrongdoing.”6
II.
The Fourth Amendment commands that no warrants, either for searches or for arrests, shall issue except upon probable cause,7 and it reflects our constitutional preference for the warrant process in which police officers present their facts to a neutral magistrate to decide if there is probable cause to issue that warrant. As Justice Jackson famously stated,
The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.8
In Aguilar v. Texas,9 the Supreme Court stated that “[a]n evaluation of the constitutionality of a search warrant should begin with the rule that ‘the informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates empowered to issue warrants ... are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers ... who may happen to make arrests.’ ”10 Indeed, in United States v. Ventresca,11 the Court declared that “in a doubtful or marginal case [of probable cause] a search under warrant may be sustained where one without one would fail.”12
The Supreme Court has repeatedly reminded reviewing courts that they should “not invalidate the warrant by interpreting the affidavit in a hyperteehnical, rather than a commonsense, manner. Although in a particular case it may not be easy to determine when an affidavit demonstrates the existence of probable cause, the resolution of doubtful or marginal cases in this area should be largely determined by the preference to be accorded to warrants.”13 Thus, even in close cases we give great deference to a magistrate’s determination of probable cause to encourage police officers to use the warrant process rather than making a warrantless search and later attempting to justify their actions by [60]*60invoking some exception to the warrant requirement.14
The cornerstone of the Fourth Amendment and its Texas equivalent is that a magistrate shall not issue a search warrant without first finding “probable cause” that a particular item will be found in a particular location.15 The definition of the term “probable cause” is, unfortunately, frequently beauty in the eye of the beholder. It is easier to explain what “probable cause” is not, rather than what it is. For example, in Bower v. State,16 this Court stated that a “magistrate is not bound by such finely tuned standards as proof beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence; rather his sole concern should be probability.”17 The test is whether a reasonable reading by the magistrate would lead to the conclusion that the affidavit provided a “substantial basis for the issuance of the warrant[,]”18 thus, “[t]he magistrate’s sole concern should be probability.”19
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OPINION
COCHRAN, J.,
delivered the opinion of the Court in which
KELLER, P.J., PRICE, JOHNSON, KEASLER, HERVEY, and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.
Appellant was charged with Possession of Cocaine with Intent to Deliver. He filed a pre-trial motion to suppress claiming that the affidavit supporting the search warrant did not contain sufficient facts to establish probable cause to search his garage. The trial judge denied the motion to suppress, but the court of appeals reversed appellant’s conviction and held that the trial court abused its discretion in not [57]*57granting appellant’s motion to suppress.1 We hold that the affidavit did support the magistrate’s finding of probable cause.2
I.
The evidence at trial showed that, in November of 2003, an informant notified Fort Worth police officers that appellant’s uncle, Eduardo Cantu, was selling and transporting large quantities of cocaine in Fort Worth. Numerous narcotics officers began surveillance of Cantu and followed his car to a house at 4816 Goddard Street in Fort Worth. This house belonged to appellant. The officers watched Cantu drive into the driveway and pull around to the rear of the house next to a detached garage. They saw Cantu get out of his car and walk into the garage. A short while later, Cantu came out of the garage. He was carrying a package in his right hand. Looking around nervously, Cantu threw that package into the backseat of his car and drove away.
One of the undercover surveillance officers followed Cantu for a few blocks in an unmarked car. When he saw Cantu fail to use a turn signal, he contacted a nearby uniformed patrol officer and asked that officer to stop Cantu for the traffic violation. During that traffic stop, Cantu gave his written consent to search his car. The patrol officer found a brown paper sack containing three brick-like objects that looked like packaged cocaine on the floor board of the left backseat. Cantu then told both the patrol and undercover officers that the three kilos of cocaine in his car came from the garage on Goddard Street and that there was more cocaine at that garage. After arresting Cantu, the undercover officer radioed the other surveillance officers, who were still watching the Goddard Street house and garage, that Cantu had told him that there were at least ten more kilos of cocaine at that location.3
One surveillance officer then left to obtain a search warrant. The remaining officers could hear “tool noises, metal on metal banging” coming from the garage. The officers therefore decided to secure the scene to prevent any destruction of evidence. They opened the garage door and saw appellant and two other males taking apart a tool box on the bed of a pickup truck. The officers had the three males sit in one area of the garage until they received confirmation that the magistrate [58]*58had issued a search warrant. They then searched the garage, found forty-three kilos of cocaine, and arrested appellant.
Appellant was indicted for possession of more than 400 grams of cocaine with the intent to distribute it. After the trial court denied appellant’s motion to suppress, a jury convicted him, and the trial judge sentenced appellant to forty-seven years’ imprisonment.
The Fort Worth Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling on the motion to suppress, concluding that the affi-ant’s “mere belief that the residence on Goddard Street was being used to store large amounts of cocaine is not enough to support the issuance of the search warrant.”4 It also concluded that the facts set out in the affidavit,5 while they “may lead to a suspicion that contraband might [59]*59be located at the residence,” did not suffice to give the magistrate “a substantial basis for concluding that a search would uncover evidence of wrongdoing.”6
II.
The Fourth Amendment commands that no warrants, either for searches or for arrests, shall issue except upon probable cause,7 and it reflects our constitutional preference for the warrant process in which police officers present their facts to a neutral magistrate to decide if there is probable cause to issue that warrant. As Justice Jackson famously stated,
The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.8
In Aguilar v. Texas,9 the Supreme Court stated that “[a]n evaluation of the constitutionality of a search warrant should begin with the rule that ‘the informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates empowered to issue warrants ... are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers ... who may happen to make arrests.’ ”10 Indeed, in United States v. Ventresca,11 the Court declared that “in a doubtful or marginal case [of probable cause] a search under warrant may be sustained where one without one would fail.”12
The Supreme Court has repeatedly reminded reviewing courts that they should “not invalidate the warrant by interpreting the affidavit in a hyperteehnical, rather than a commonsense, manner. Although in a particular case it may not be easy to determine when an affidavit demonstrates the existence of probable cause, the resolution of doubtful or marginal cases in this area should be largely determined by the preference to be accorded to warrants.”13 Thus, even in close cases we give great deference to a magistrate’s determination of probable cause to encourage police officers to use the warrant process rather than making a warrantless search and later attempting to justify their actions by [60]*60invoking some exception to the warrant requirement.14
The cornerstone of the Fourth Amendment and its Texas equivalent is that a magistrate shall not issue a search warrant without first finding “probable cause” that a particular item will be found in a particular location.15 The definition of the term “probable cause” is, unfortunately, frequently beauty in the eye of the beholder. It is easier to explain what “probable cause” is not, rather than what it is. For example, in Bower v. State,16 this Court stated that a “magistrate is not bound by such finely tuned standards as proof beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of the evidence; rather his sole concern should be probability.”17 The test is whether a reasonable reading by the magistrate would lead to the conclusion that the affidavit provided a “substantial basis for the issuance of the warrant[,]”18 thus, “[t]he magistrate’s sole concern should be probability.”19 Probable cause exists when, under the totality of the circumstances, there is a “fair probability” that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found at the specified location.20 It is a “flexible and nondemanding” standard.21
[61]*61Neither federal nor Texas law defines precisely what degree of probability suffices to establish probable cause, but that probability cannot be based on mere conclusory statements of an affiant’s belief.22 An affiant must present an affidavit that allows the magistrate to independently determine probable cause and the magistrate’s “ ‘aetion[s] cannot be a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others.’ ”23
On the other hand, when reviewing a magistrate’s decision to issue a warrant, trial and appellate courts apply a highly deferential standard in keeping with the constitutional preference for a warrant.24 Thus, when an appellate court reviews an issuing magistrate’s determination, that court should interpret the affidavit in a commonsensical and realistic manner, recognizing that the magistrate may draw reasonable inferences.25 When in doubt, we defer to all reasonable inferences that the magistrate could have made.
Just last term, in Davis v. State,26 this Court addressed the level of specificity required in an affidavit for a magistrate to find probable cause to issue a search warrant. In Davis, the defendant was arrested for the manufacture of methamphetamine seized under a search warrant.27 The magistrate had issued the warrant based on the affiant’s statement that a patrol officer drove past the defendant’s residence and “could smell a strong chemical odor he has associated with the [62]*62manufacture of methamphetamine emitting from the residence.”28 The court of appeals held that the magistrate did not have a sufficient basis for issuing a search warrant because the affiant did not specifically describe the officer’s “expertise or experience in recognizing the odor associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine.” 29 This Court rejected that logic. We stated that it was a reasonable inference that a police officer who smells something that he “ ‘associat[es]’ with the manufacture of methamphetamine” has had prior experience with methamphetamine.30 Otherwise he would not recognize the smell of methamphetamine. We concluded that when this statement and its supporting inferences were combined with the other facts in the affidavit (including an informant’s tip), the totality of the information provided enough support for the magistrate’s decision to issue a warrant.31 The inquiry for reviewing courts, including the trial court, is whether there are sufficient facts, coupled with inferences from those facts, to establish a “fair probability” that evidence of a particular crime will likely be found at a given location. The issue is not whether there are other facts that could have, or even should have, been included in the affidavit; we focus on the combined logical force of facts that are in the affidavit, not those that are omitted from the affidavit.
III.
With those general principles in mind, we turn now to the affidavit in this case. This affidavit stated that an experienced narcotics officer received information that Cantu was selling and transporting large amounts of cocaine in Fort Worth. Based on this information, a team of officers began surveillance of Cantu and followed him to 4316 Goddard Street. They saw him “arrive at this location and pull into the driveway and park close to a metal shed” or garage. He went into the garage. Shortly thereafter, they saw him come out of the garage with a package in his right hand. As he looked around nervously, Cantu threw that package into the back seat. It is a fair inference from these facts that Cantu obtained that package from the garage.
The affidavit also states that after Cantu was stopped for a traffic violation and consented to a search of his car, the patrol officer found a brown paper sack, containing three brick-like objects both he and the undercover officer believed to be cocaine on the backseat floor board of the vehicle — just exactly where the surveillance officers had seen Cantu toss the “object” that he had taken out of the garage.
It is also a fair inference from these facts that the object Cantu took from the garage and tossed into the back seat area was the very same object that the officers found in the back seat area. One object tossed into the car, one object taken out of the car. That object looked like bricks of cocaine.
In this case, the court of appeals focused on various facts that the affidavit did not contain, rather than the facts that it did contain. It also failed to defer to the reasonable inferences that the magistrate [63]*63could draw from those facts. Most notably, the court of appeals stated that
the affiant has not provided facts that would lead a detached and neutral magistrate to determine that the brown paper sack containing the cocaine was the same “object” that Cantu obtained from the detached garage and placed in the backseat of his car.32
The issue in this case is whether the magistrate could infer that the package of cocaine found in the backseat of Cantu’s car was the very same package that Cantu carried out of the garage and put into the backseat. This is a reasonable inference, especially since there was no suggestion, either in the affidavit itself or at the motion to suppress hearing or at trial, that there were any other packages in the backseat of Cantu’s car. It is also an entirely reasonable inference that the package did, in fact, contain “bricks” of cocaine, that it came from the Goddard Street garage, and that there was a fair probability that more cocaine might still be in that same garage. Although it is possible that Cantu had taken all of the cocaine with him when he left, it is at least equally reasonable to conclude that where there was smoke (the original three-kilo package of cocaine) there was fire (a larger cache of cocaine). And where there was loud banging within the garage from which the original package of cocaine was taken, there might well be activities in progress to prepare those additional amounts of cocaine for transport. Neither the officers nor the magistrate could be positive of the existence of additional contraband in the garage, but it is certainly “a fair probability” that there was more cocaine stored where the first package came from.
We agree with what the court of appeals is implying: the more information in an affidavit the better. In this case, the addition of a single sentence, “Cantu told the arresting officers that there was at least ten kilos more of cocaine in the Goddard Street garage,”33 would have made the reviewing courts’ task much easier. But that fact was not crucial to establish probable cause. In this case, the affiant was sent from the Goddard Street location to draft an affidavit, find a magistrate, present the affidavit and warrant to that magistrate, and wait for the magistrate’s review and issuance of the warrant, all while the other officers were at the Goddard Street garage detaining three men and awaiting further instructions. It is not surprising that, in his haste, the affiant did [64]*64not compose a polished document that “dotted every i and crossed every t.”34
The proper analysis of the sufficiency of a search-warrant affidavit is not whether as much information that could have been put into an affidavit was actually in the affidavit. As reviewing courts, we are obliged to defer to the magistrate and uphold his determination based upon all reasonable and commonsense inferences and conclusions that the affidavit facts support.
This case turns on two simple and reasonable inferences: First, the magistrate could infer that the package of cocaine found in the back seat of Cantu’s car was the exact same package that the police saw Cantu take from the garage and throw into the back seat. Second, “[i]t does not distort common sense or read additional facts into the affidavit to infer from this information” 35 that there were more drugs located at the Goddard Street garage. Although it is possible that there were really two different packages — one containing cocaine that had been in Cantu’s car all along and another, innocuous package that Cantu carried with him out of appellant’s garage — that scenario is based entirely upon speculation as no second package was mentioned in the affidavit.36 And, although it is entirely possible that Cantu took all of the cocaine stored at the Goddard Street garage with him when he left, it is at least as likely that the three kilo package was just a small part of the whole cache.
We hold that these facts and inferences suffice to establish probable cause. Probable cause is “a fluid concept — turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts — not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a set of neat legal rules.”37 We must defer to the magistrate’s finding of probable cause if the affidavit demonstrates a substantial basis for his conclusion. It is not necessary to delve into all of the facts that were omitted by the affiant, facts that could have been included in the affidavit, or contrary inferences that could have been made by the magistrate. The only issue is whether the facts that actually were in the affidavit, combined with all reasonable inferences that might flow from those facts, are sufficient to establish a “fair probability” that more cocaine would be found at the Goddard Street garage. We hold that the facts in this case are sufficient.
Therefore, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand this case to that court to address appellant’s remaining claims.
MEYERS, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which WOMACK, J., joined