Since moving to San Diego, it has only “rained” once. It required my husband to use the windshield wipers twice in 20 minutes. I realize that this area is basically a desert with something around 12 inches of rainfall annually, the majority of which falls between January and March, but we had barely seen clouds in months, let alone actual precipitation.
But when I woke up this morning, it was raining. Really raining.
It reminded me a bit of the opening of Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle when her family is leaving the desert of Arizona and the gas station cashier grumps that it had better not rain on her day off. San Diego has some strict drought restrictions in place right now. My particular favorite is that restaurant employees cannot offer patrons water unless requested and also cannot refill water glasses unless asked.
So we need the rain and I was happy to see it. The first rain of the season is the worst because all the oils that have built up on the roads over the dry, hot summer float on the water and make the streets very slippery. Since it rains so rarely, locals (we have been repeatedly informed) don’t know how to drive in actual weather. It’s been interesting listening to screeching tires all day.
The only bad thing about the rain for me is that one of the gutters on our apartment is bent, so the rain spills over the edge. See?
It’s not a huge deal, and it’s not like it rains that often, right? The only problem is the place that it’s bent is somewhat inconveniently located, thus directing a constant stream of water right onto the only staircase that leads down from our apartment. Like so.
When I ran to the grocery store this morning, I took an umbrella just to pass that point. Good thing we have about five umbrellas in the closet. Whew.
It’s a good baking day, though. I made a few more addictive peanut butter cookies with some dough I had tossed in the freezer before we left. Since the hubby is at work, I might just have soup for dinner and curl up with some magazines and a cup of tea. Saturday nights get pretty crazy around here, huh?
What else is there to do on a rainy day?
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This post made me think of two unrelated things. One, I remember in college when I made some friends from California, it was confusing for them and interesting to me that in the midwest winter is the dry season, while out there winter is the wet season. (Notice I didn’t say extremely confusing or interesting – just kind of a “how about that” observation.)
The other thought is that I’m starting to think that “locals” everywhere think the drivers in their area are the worst. Out here they can’t even drive in the sunshine.
Regional weather is strange. After I posted yesterday I learned that the rain broke a 164-day rainless streak for the city.
It also caused 257 car crashes yesterday. There are terrible drivers everywhere, I think here there are probably about the same percentage, but that is a much greater actual number. A normal sunny day has 50-70 crashes for comparison.