Thursday December 9, 2004 – I Love the Rain

Thursday December 9, 2004 – I Love the Rain

Today, it’s raining in San Jose and it’s my favorite time of year after a long stretch of hot sunny days—fall is summer in California since September and October have days with daytime temperatures exceeding those of summer months. This year that was not the case though. Our first good rain came in October, a month that is typically dryer than the following three months. The rain rolled in from the Pacific in a curving arc that began in the Ocean off Asia moving northeastward along the Aleutian Islands, following the curve of Alaska and finally making landfall on the western coast of Canada, Washington, and Oregon. From there the moisture-laden weather system slides down into Northern California. The direction of the jet stream determines if California gets drenched or merely showered.

The storms of this October hit California straight on with the jet stream driving the brunt on the storm on-shore directly over the San Francisco Bay Area. This was a good storm and when it hit us, it came with a strong will that broke off tree branches, shook leaves from deciduous trees just beginning to shred—clogging storm drains and causing local flooding, and indiscriminately cut power to various neighborhoods throughout the region. The culprits in the power outages were falling branches severing exposed power lines, or the errant car or truck that rammed and toppled a power pole. A storm like the one in October has personality. It reminds me of a unattended child filled with impetuous energy that wrecks havoc on a well-ordered room filled with precariously placed bric-a-brac. But the storm not only blew strong, it dropped a good couple of inches of rain throughout the region. I knew it was a prodigious rain because of the flooding that filled the parking lot outside my workplace in Palo Alto, which is near the wetlands on the western shore of San Francisco Bay.

There is nothing to compare to the smell of a storm after it has washed a sun-parched region like the bay area. It conjures up in me a sense of a new beginning, an exhilaration that fills me with an enormous sense of well-being. The rain is especially welcome since the entire region for six months or more has only known the teasing moisture of the persistent fog rolling east from the ocean as the sun sets in the west. The fog’s rhythm and motion is directed by the capricious notions of the itinerant high pressure systems that sweep in from the Pacific and move eastward across the continent. When the high decides to linger over the four-corners region of the west, California is baked with temperatures hovering in the high 90s often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit everywhere in the Bay Area not within 20 to 30 miles of the Pacific Coast. When the storm comes after a spell of such hot weather, the effect is cathartic, as if the smothering embrace of the devil himself had been broken. The experience is similar to the release I felt following a powerful thunderstorm sweeping across East Texas after days of sweltering, humid, windless days. Only the smell after a thunderstorm has the lingering scent of ozone released in the flashes of lightning exploding around us like an artillery fusillade.

The rains of California are not often accompanied by thunder and lightning though cold and warm fronts colliding over the region do occasionally produce thunderstorms and the faint smell of ozone. The sense of smell is primal. It conjures memories much more spontaneously than any of the other senses. The smell of a thunderstorm unleashes a flood of remembrances that stretch back to early childhood, of places—Mississippi, Puerto Rico, Oklahoma, the stretch of desert along Interstate 10 from Blythe, California to Las Cruces, New Mexico—of people—some past away, others alive and well, and of moments in time—an intense downpour on a stretch of Central Expressway between Richardson and Plano, Texas when blinded and trying to slow a fast moving car, I felt completely momentarily helpless—my wife “I” and daughter M terrified in the passenger seat—then exhilarated after we’d passed through the deluge unscathed.

But the rains of this week were not the kind that would linger in memory. These storms lacked personality, a will, a sense of power that others seem to have in abundance. The first storm originally predicted to roll in on Sunday into Monday fell apart managing only to dampen the region with a light rainfall though it did bring winds that initially suggested a sense of mischief, later unfounded. It was followed by a second that arrived Tuesday evening. This one came in howling with a good wind to shake more leaves from trees shedding their spring coat in preparation for winter’s slumber. It also produced some impressive rainfalls in the northern part of the region. However, as the storm attempted to sink southward over the South Bay, the jet stream began to rise pulling the rain along leaving us with barely a quarter inch of precipitation—this update from the proprietress of the cleaners where I picked up my dry cleaning and laundry on my homeward commute.

For California, the rains are travelers whose regular visits during the months of October through February the state depends on. These rains replenish depleted aquifers drained by artesian wells that not only nourish the farmlands that resist suburban sprawl in the Santa Clara Valley, but the suburbanites insatiable thirst for water. They also drop many feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada that the state has harnessed to supply water during the dry months. When these visitors decide to reduce the frequency of their visits, we suffer, not only the lack of water but the absent benediction these rainfalls deliver to those of us that look forward to their yearly baptisms.