It has been raining all day here in New York: steady, non-torrential-yet-very-wet rain.  It is the type of rain that is likely to continue all day, and the weather forecast suggests that it will, indeed, continue all day.

Here's my question: what is the point of this type of rain?

In 2004, I lived in South Beach for three months.  They handle rain differently down there; their rain-handling scheme makes much more sense than ours, seems to me.

Here is how they've got the rain thing set up in south Florida: it doesn't rain.  Then, it doesn't rain again the next day, until around 5:00 in the afternoon, at which point it rains Genesis-style for about forty-five minutes, and then it stops.  Then, the next day, no rain, followed by a rain-free day after that, aside from another Biblical rain event in the evening.

They vary the pattern a bit, but that's basically the pattern, at least for this time of year.

In other words, an efficient precipitation scheme: it rains a large range of animals (cats, dogs, elephants, mice, Nubian rabbits, northern wood voles, trout, etc.) for a very short amount of time, watering the area with as much rain as we get in New York in a day with the bullllllllllllshit-type rain such as we're getting today, then it stops, and lets people resume their normal, dry, sunlit lives.

Why can't we have that here?  Why?  If you're going to get three inches of rain, does it really matter if it comes over the course of an entire day or all in forty-five minutes?  Maybe it does: maybe there are certain species of plant or animal that need their rain spread out over many, many hours; that do not benefit from (or are even harmed by) rain that comes all at once.

If that's the case, I say, to hell with those species.  Adapt or die, dudes.  Do you know how many species there are?  In the world?  Estimates vary: between two million and 100 million.  Let's say that there are as few as two million: great.  Two million is a lot of species.  What's a few more or less, when you've got two million to play with?

Right?

What am I missing?

I feel like I'm missing something.

But I don't think I am.  Actually, I am: what I'm missing is, seeing the sun for an entire day or two and counting.

Aside from that, I don't think I'm missing anything.

I therefore call upon Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Spitzer Paterson, and New York Senators Schumer and Clinton (who should have the time, now, to deal with this sort of thing) to look into the utterly flawed way in which we handle rain here in the Empire State.  If Florida can effectively manage their rain, than surely we can too.

Onward.