The Serious Business of Rain

All at once, there’s an end to the immediate fire threat, a rebirth of the sage scrub and, perhaps most important to Southern Californians, a sign that we have that thing called weather. No wonder sun-clad locals treat the first big rain of the season as though it were a business-stopping blizzard and giddily speak of little else.

The rain, which came in a rare, early downpour this fall, also brings breathless televised reminders of other yearly events. Low-lying Seal Beach, where they never seem to figure out the pumping capacity they need, has some flooding. Motorists with sun-bleached memories forget about leaving space between cars on slick roads and fender-benders triple. The detritus from streets and streams washes into the ocean, making the surf smell like a bad fish stew, only with more bacteria.

People in greener parts of the country don’t understand how serious a business that rain, and the timing of it, can be in a near desert. The final days of October last year gave Southern California the wildfires that killed 24 people, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and blackened 739,000 acres. Eleven years ago, the Malibu, Laguna Beach and Altadena fires came at almost the same time of year. In a dry 2004, the brush was arid and brown by late spring. The past week’s storms made the “wildfire danger” gauges at the parks dip overnight from “extreme” to “low.” Clusters of pale-yellow mustard flowers and purple lupine can’t be far behind.

So maybe we can be forgiven for going a little goofy over a drenching and early rain. When the sun emerges, we awaken to air briefly washed clean, fresh in our lungs, and look to the long-beige hills for the first hint of green.