Why I Appreciate Cloudy Days in LA

Crawling out of bed on a Monday morning to see dark, cotton candy looking clouds hover over Los Angeles is weird. If it begins to rain in LA, the first thought that crosses my mind is that the apocalypse is upon us.

However in all honesty, I find my general reaction to rain odd. I should not be so surprised to experience rainy weather having grown up in Moscow, Russia, where I would usually wake up to a depressing sky. The days that vitamin D blessed our bodies (especially in the winter) were quite lucky.

Interestingly enough, now that I live in sunny California I can’t help but appreciate the rare gloomy weather, even if getting out of bed becomes a lot more challenging.

Thus, I would like to share some of the fantastic benefits to cloudy days.

Firstly, I feel like bad weather can trigger our memories and make us reminisce about important aspects of our life. For instance, during last week’s overcast Monday, I spared a few minutes from my busy day to just stare out the window. While lost in my own thought, I recalled a particularly fun afternoon that happened six years ago. My older sister and I decided to bravely dash outside into the rain during a raging thunderstorm while our parents weren’t home. Soaked to our underwear, we quickly sprinted back home to the safety of a warm shower. Although this memory might seem trivial to others, to me that afternoon was genuinely terrific.

I believe that if LA was not cloudy that Monday morning, I would have not looked out the window. If I did not look out the window, I would have not thought about that specific memory.  As a college student, I think that these types of memories about family are really important to maintain. Memories help us stay in touch with our roots and also remind us to appreciate the people that helped shape us to be the person we are today.

Cloudy days are also beneficial as a result of their magical ability to make people want to stay indoors. When it is sunny all the time, people feel the need to take advantage of the good weather, so they scatter to all corners of the campus. However, since bad weather encourages people to stay indoors, think about how easy it is to meet new people when they could be found all in one dorm building together or all huddled in the same library!

Lastly, if you’re staying indoors anyways, maybe you’ll have more reason to go start writing that paper that’s due in a couple of hours…

Therefore, although I appreciate the postcard perfect weather we Californians experience on a daily basis, I also enjoy a nice, cloudy day too.