This past Thursday morning it rained.
Growing up in Old Home, rain was thing that never happened in Summer - if it happened it was so infrequent that it was to be commented on for years. Rain only happened from October to perhaps April or even May. New Home 2.0 was different as well - we learned that rain did come in Summer, but it came in bursts that were warm and overwhelming and often for short period of time. And then, of course, the clouds would clear and the Sun would come out and Summer would return with a vengeance.
The Summer rains here in New Home 3.0 are very different.
Although they seem (in theory) not common, they are not unknown. Their force is no more than any other time of the year: often a soft and almost mystical fall, the sort of rhythm that I remember for Winter rains as a child.
This is an interlude of course: Summer is still here and we will lurch back to it next week with a vengeance. But even in this, the whisper of Autumn is in the wings: looking back on historical records (what I have at this point), early August is the high point of Summer here and, fitfully at first and then picking up in speed and intensity, the temperatures will fall. In two months it will be as if Summer had never come at all.
And for me, happily, the pattern and rhythm of the rain will return.
Although I strayed for about 7 or 8 years, I have lived geographically all my life in the same region of this world. I find myself having to rewrite the rules of weather, especially this last decade or two. In my youth, we had precipitation fall all year round with never a dry month. Then maybe 15 or so years ago, it wasn't uncommon to get a couple or three dry months in a row but always in the late summer months. The last couple years we now seem to be getting fairly dry springs over a month or month and a half and regular precipitation after that though our winters have been abnormally dry. Thus I make no hard rules anymore when it comes to predicting the weather. If forced to make one, I guess I predict it will become only more unpredictable.
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