Is There Still a Sun Up There?

It’s called rain. We have to live with it. Everybody else does. Yes, it’s wet, and we are getting far more of it than usual. It’s water, drops of picnic-ending moisture that fall regularly on all kinds of places that manage to survive just fine free of tizzies, funks and the need to drive 70 mph to get out of the slippery danger quicker.

Now it’s our turn to get wet for a while. Quite a while. Be glad it’s not 20 degrees outside or we’d be making real news.

One of the wettest seasons in a century is washing off the blase makeup and exposing Californians’ spoiled side. Weather in Southern California is supposed to be predictable, and predictably nice. Sun. Sun. Sun. That never gets boring. Put the jackets and the umbrellas away for months on end.

You expect some rainy spots early in the year here. But not rainy periods. Not rainy weeks. Days on end of gray skies. Soppy lawns. Hands-free, sky-washed cars. This spoils the taking-everything-for-granted approach.

Elsewhere, the thermometer hasn’t moved much north of 32 for weeks. The snow has turned gray and crunchy. And folks are saving frequent-flier miles to come here.

Freed of elsewhere’s climatological afflictions, Southern Californians don’t know weather fear.

Weather fear is 6 a.m. and everything -- EVERYthing -- is coated with ice. Weather fear is an ocean storm so big it’s got a name. Weather fear is 3 p.m. on a muggy July day when a siren sounds, the air goes silent and the kids, also silent, know why you’re packing them into the basement’s southwest corner.

This is just rain. Live with the moisture surplus. Think of it as a drought drought. It goes away by itself.