"Into each life some rain must fall," wrote the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
And so it has rained in recent days.
Bring it on, we say.
Northern California – indeed all of California – is desperate for every drop. After two dry winters, the state's reservoirs are at their lowest point in 14 years.
Nature needs to replenish the state's savings accounts. If it doesn't, California could face yet another crisis of liquidity.
The storms that started rolling in Thursday provide a ray of hope. By Tuesday, Sacramento had received more than 2 inches of rain, and it was the perfect type of downpour.
Not too hard. Not too windy. Just the kind of steady rain that's needed to cleanse the air, knock the leaves off the trees and gently feed streams and lakes.
Folsom Reservoir, at 25 percent of capacity, saw an immediate, but brief, infusion.
By Monday, inflow into this reservoir had jumped from 500 to 1,500 cubic feet of water per second. Inflows into Oroville and Shasta, the largest reservoirs in California, jumped to their highest levels since June.
Do these storms signal a decent winter ahead?
Possibly. Tom Stienstra, the outdoors writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, reports that caterpillars are showing thick coats of fur – an indicator of early and heavy rain.
He also notes that the current onion crop has reasonably thick skins – another sign, he says, that dry times are unlikely.
There's also some scientific information to ponder.
Scientists are seeing signs of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a powerful wave of wind from the tropics that circles the globe in 30 to 60 days.
This oscillation is complicated – too complicated for editorial writers to understand – but scientists we know and respect say it is an important factor in West Coast storms.
So bring it on, we say. As Longfellow might add, "Into each life some Madden-Julian Oscillation must fall."
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