A flooded house partially underwater in Gilroy, Calif. on Jan. 9, 2023. Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP).

I write too many weather-related columns. I’ll own up to that right now. I’ve definitely been trying to cut down. That said, I’m doing another one. I’m too thrilled to see the sun.

It was raining for, conservatively, nine straight years, or at least that’s what it feels like. After entire winters where it didn’t even drizzle, we got all that water at once. As it turns out, drought or no, that’s bad! Trees fell, roads washed out, millions lost power, homes and businesses flooded, people died. It was terrible. And, even if you live in California and dodged the worst of it, it was still very damp and very depressing.

Now, however, it’s gonna be dry at least through the rest of the month. Those couple weeks will let things dry out and hopefully start resembling normal, in case we get hit again later. So I’m in a celebratory mood and we’re gonna listen to songs about it not raining.

Johnny Nash — “I Can See Clearly Now”

I really, really try not to double up songs on these interminable weather-related columns, I really do. I also try not to be too on the nose with them. But I’m re-using this one from 2019. It’s this weekend’s theme song, after all. When the sun came out Thursday after the last (for now) band of storms, this song played in my head on repeat until it got dark. So I’m getting it out of the way first and moving on to something new.

Thank you for indulging me.

Bill Withers — “Lovely Day”

It’s not, in an absolute sense, a lovely day. By Bay Area standards, it’s brutally, inhumanly, unreasonably cold. But I can go outside without getting soaked, so it absolutely counts.

A note for those of you outside the Bay Area: My complaint is that the daily high is in the 50s and the overnight low is in the high 30s. That, to locals, is like being on Mars at night. I don’t know how people in other places live like this.

Because of that attitude, we get a lot of mockery from those in the north and east that our brutal temperatures that make the news are their spring, but consider the difference in cost of living. Your monthly rent costs the same as a moderately priced dinner in San Francisco. You get what you pay for and we should, too.

Boyz II Men — “Water Runs Dry”

Speaking of getting soaked when you go outside, for those who weren’t here, I have an anecdote about what this series of storms was like.

I was in downtown Oakland during one of the days when the rain was intermittent, so I was trying to time my lunch break to a break in the storm. Eventually I looked out the window and not only was it not raining but I could see little bits of blue between the clouds, so I grabbed my coat and my umbrella in case it started again before I got back and I rushed to the door.

In the time it took me to get from my desk on the third floor to the front door it had started raining and hailing at the same time, which I didn’t realize was a thing. Torrentially raining. But I had gone that far, so I decided to try going to a restaurant around the corner. I made it maybe 15 or 20 feet from the door before giving up, and despite having the aforementioned jacket and umbrella, I was soaked from head to toe, right through my clothes. My hair got dripping wet through the umbrella somehow! I don’t even know what the physics of that would be like!

Anyway, fortunately, the water is now running dry. That’s why I picked this song, despite it being a breakup song. Also, I like it and it’s my column.

Creedence Clearwater Revival — “Who’ll Stop the Rain”

Like I said in the intro, the irony of how bad this storm was is that it came during a record, historic drought. Reservoirs were so empty that you could walk on the bottom next to the trickle of a creek that used to be the river that was supposed to be filling it. Things were getting downright dangerous! Then this happened.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the rain to stop completely. We do need water. It would, ideally, just be spread out over the course of four to six months rather than condensed into three to four weeks. Water does need time to move to where it can be useful before the next batch falls, otherwise you just end up with mud and chaos.

Radiohead — “High & Dry”

On the bright side of all this, some reservoirs have seen their water level go up four feet or more. That’s not full by any means, but considering the surface area of the reservoirs, that’s a whole lot of water. We’re still in trouble, but it helps.

I do hope weather doesn’t leave us literally or figuratively high and dry. We do need some more rain and snow. We’ve hit our average annual rainfall total already but we have ground to make up from the drought. Not soon of course, but at some point.

Maybe we can schedule some light-to-moderate rain for, say, a week to 10 days? Maybe in March? Great, thanks.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.