The Rain Stops

The rain has stopped coming down here, but we still have weather.

They had predicted that Tuesday would have a torrent that dwarfed Monday's showers, so I wore my neoprene sandals to work for walking through a flooded parking lot and carried my better shoes & socks in my tote bag. When I left home, the inch-deep pools in the yard next to the driveway were full and it was raining. On the drive to work, though, the rain stopped and I saw a color in the sky I haven’t seen for a while: blue. By the time I got to work (60 miles from home), the sky was clear of all but a few white clouds in the east and my car said the temperature outside was 58. I put my good shoes on in the car and went inside.

At lunchtime, I ventured outside for lunch for the first time in three working days. The rain was still gone, the sky still blue, but the wind was blowing strongly with a cold edge to it—not a bite in it like in places that have winter, just an edge. It’s the kind of wind that blows your hair in front of your face so you can’t find your car, that makes you pull your coat around you for better warmth, that says, "now this is weather."

In California, we don’t usually get weather. We spend half of the year with an absence of anything in the air besides temperature. Sure, we get June Gloom: about a month or so of solidly overcast skies that promise moisture but never deliver. And we get 100-degree heat in August or September that makes people pull their fans out of the back corner of the garage (or the lucky few turn on the air conditioning), but nothing else comes with the heat. So when we get weather that people in places with actual seasons consider part of normal living, we’re surprised. Heavy rain is a challenge. Blustery wind is an adventure. Rainbows are so rare they’re like seeing the crown jewels.

But sometimes, because we don’t get it often enough, we’re unprepared and the weather kills. If you feel led, you can contribute to help the victims of the California mudslides through the International Disaster Emergency Services (IDES), a Christian charitable organization that keeps its overhead low by using volunteers from unaffected churches near the disasters to provide relief.