Songs for the Storm: A Rainy Day Playlist
It’s raining. And this isn’t just any kind of rain; we’re in the midst of a storm that is projected to shower our fair city with the equivalent of a month’s worth of rain in just 48 hours! [Ed. note: This post was originally written about a different storm. But it’s raining today! So the music still works.] And, as the New York Times helpfully (sadistically?) points out, “it won’t be nice warm tropical rain, either. The storm system is the same one that flung tornadoes across Arkansas over the weekend. As it spins slowly northeastward, it will pick up cold, moist air off the still chilly Atlantic.” This enormous amount of rainfall (if it were snow, it would be over three feet!) will even result in something that the National Weather Service rather poetically calls “ponding.” Lovely, yes?
Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that rain is sort of inherently romantic, or it is if you’re able to stay inside, preferably somewhere warm. No, in the much more realistic sense that most of us have to leave our homes eventually and engage with the world—the waterlogged, flooding world. But let’s go back to that rain is romantic thing for a moment, because there is something special about gray days like these, just like there’s something special about the first warm, sunny stretch of days in spring. (Any day now, right? Fingers crossed.) And perhaps we’re not alone in thinking that certain types of weather call for certain types of music? We didn’t think so. Here’s a rainy day playlist of drifting, dreamy songs to get you through the storm.