The sky is blue. The air has a lovely crispness, hanging around what feels to be the low sixties. The hills have turned that beautiful emerald green that first seduced me when I visited Stanford, and the buds on the trees are swelling, getting ready to burst into flower.

This is a not a good thing.

Weather happens in patterns. The Northern California weather has given us day after day of clear sunshine.  Some days the thermometer has risen into the high seventies in San Jose and elsewhere in the South Bay. Even days that are gray and overcast, as Tuesday was, produce no rain.

In addition to sunny days, the lack of rain has resulted in “Spare-the-Air Days” which cause problems for people with respiratory conditions such as asthma (which would include me). Some members of my family get migraines on days with heavy pollution.

I realize that to my friends in Boston and Washington this may seem like whining. We’re not having to dig out from snowstorm after snowstorm, or, as is the case in parts of the South, finding ourselves stranded in our house by ice sheets. We certainly do not risk hypothermia when we head out of the house.

I’m looking down the line. Already the highway signs flash reminders that we are in a severe drought. We face even worse. (I do not understand why in the world we have not already been hit with mandatory water rationing.) This summer is going to be brutal; I don’t even want to think about fire season. I would dearly love to have even a quarter of the precipitation of Boston this winter, especially if it fell in the form of snow adding to the Sierra snowpack.

I wish it would rain.