I woke up this morning to a rain shower. We’d been expecting it – our second of the season, me having been caught in the middle of the first one last Thursday while biking to work. This one was heavier and lasted several hours before drying up around mid-morning.
I’ve always loved rainy days. I have a memory from probably around 10 years old of having to walk the dog (our Welsh corgi, Punkin) during a hurricane. I’m sure I remember it more fondly than I felt about it at the time, though hurricanes are usually pretty tame by the time they get to Massachusetts.
In Wisconsin we got some great rain storms. I remember driving through a lightning storm on the highway and marveling at the hundreds of lightning bolts coming down in the sky. Also watching a huge storm pass about ten miles north of Madison while watching from my apartment balcony. But also walking through plenty of showers – and a few storms, the rain not stopping me from heading downtown to the coffee shop on any given Friday night. I’d certainly get wet sometimes, since I stopped wearing raincoats in college and stuck with just a jacket and an umbrella. But I didn’t mind.
In California we sometimes joke that we don’t have weather, we have climate. I miss all the weather I’d get in other parts of the country – even the snow, but mostly the rain. Rain here is mostly restricted to November-through-April, and is usually concentrated around Feburary and March. The rest of the year it’s the “eternal summer”, and rain showers are rare and light. But even the winter showers are really just that – showers. We don’t get big storms, we rarely get thunder and lightning, and usually not a lot of wind. Not by the standards of other parts of the country.
But I appreciate the rain whenever it comes (and not just because we’re in a drought). I like listening to it come down on the roof, smelling the scents released by the rocks when they get damp, and even going out and clearing clogged drains with a stick.
There’s nothing else like it.