One thing that I didn’t notice until today is that since I’ve been living here in the Bay Area, I’ve seen/been in more locational rain than ever.

The morning started off pretty quiet. Being Veteran’s Day, I was expecting a light commute on my way into work. I looked out the window and it was pretty grey, which did not surprise me, as the news people have been predicting a pretty rainy week. However, it was one of the most bizarre drives I’ve ever taken.

I looked over to the east, and saw blue skies and the sun beginning to rise. There was a good deal of cloud cover, but enough space to allow some light to get through. As I looked to the west however, I saw something completely different. It was blacker than night, with ugly storm clouds raining on the mountains.

As I continued to drive in, the contrast grew greater. In my rear view mirror I could see the sun, struggling to spread it’s life to the earth. Ahead of me was an angry sky, raining down on the hapless inhabitants. This lead to one of the most amazing rainbows I have ever seen. I’ve seen plenty of rainbows in my time, but most have been relatively thin, and usually I can only see about 1/3 of the arch. This rainbow was different. It was bright and vivid, thick and majestic, and I could see the entire arch of the rainbow, from ground to ground. As I turned north, I saw the beginning of another rainbow, right next to the existing one.

As I diverted my attention back to the road, the landscape in front of me was bathed in an eerie light. The low lying sun, combined with low lying clouds had combined to form a yellowish-grey glow. I could see the top of the trees enjoying the light, none of which ever hit the ground. The world had this surreal look to it, and by the time I arrived at my destination, the clouds had completely overtaken the skies, which left the world grey.

About an hour later it was pouring outside.

By the time I started home, it looked like there was some sunshine outside. By the time I reached my car, it was apparent to me that the clouds had lightened up, allowing the setting sun to say goodbye for today. As I drove along the freeway, I could see the rain in front of me. No, I didn’t mean that I could see the rain starting to fall. Not more than a couple of hundred of feet in front of me, and a few hundred feet away from my exit, I could see a wall of rain. Within seconds, I was driving through pouring rain, with my wipers trying to quickly remove the water from my windshield. After driving up the exit ramp, I merged onto another freeway and just as quickly as I drove into the rain, I drove out of it. Not only that, but the highway looked dry which left me wondering.

Is it raining in just that one spot?

I drove further south, pondering my question when I looked over to the east and I could clearly see an area a few miles away that was getting heavily rained upon. During the rest of my drive home, I would hit short patches of rain (a few hundred feet in radius). The rain zones looked pretty wet, as if it had been raining there for a bit, while the rainless areas looked fairly dry.

Is this normal?

I thought a little bit about this occurrence. Is this phenomenon specific to the Bay Area? Or am I noticing it more because it seems to rain more out here than anywhere I’ve lived?

My theory is that it’s a combination of both reasons. Out here, it only seems to ever rain in the winter, and the rain seems to be fairly calm. The rain I’m used to seeing on the East Coast is usually accompanied by a lot of wind. Probably due more to proximity to the coast than anything else, the wind seems to be enough to remove the illusion of localized rain. Also, since all the rain is confined to a few months of a year, the amount of rainfall is deceptive. It can rain every day for weeks, and that seems to be fairly normal. Back out East, it will rain in any month of the year, which makes the amount of rainfall deceptive.

I think the geography of the area has a lot to do with this. The weather patterns move west to east here, so the long coastline, the inlet to the bay along with the mountains only a few miles from the coast cause strange things to happen.

At least that’s my theory.