Rain: Seven reasons to be gloomy

On a morning so dismal that one might wonder how the birds knew it was daybreak, the forecast is about as gloomy as the ghostly gray mass that has been obscuring the Philadelphia skyline.

After seven consecutive days of rain, the outlook calls for about five more, give or take one or two.

"It's been gorgeous," said Greg Heavener, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly. Yes, he was being facetious; the gloom is getting to him, too.

Complaints about gloom and light deprivation are nothing new in the Philadelphia region - in November and December.

You just don't hear them very much in the week before Mother's Day. If it's getting to you, that's normal, said Dr. George C. Brainard, director of Jefferson University Hospital's Light Research Program

"Absolutely everyone responds to light on a biological and behavioral level," says Brainard. Although a gloomy week in May is unlikely to induce the serious symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, experienced by up to 3 percent of the population in winter, most people probably don't feel like breaking into song.

"We really wouldn't expect that a person would get a clinical reponse," he said. "That being said, it doesn't mean they won't have some level of response."

The skies haven't been clear since Sunday a week ago, during that renegade heat wave.

So far, the wet spell has been more water torture than deluge, with less than 1.5 inches spread out over a week. Through Sunday rainfall, for the last three months remained 25 to 40 percent below normal throughout the region.

In fact, the weather service hasn't issued a flood warning around here in eight months, Heavener said. But that could change by the end of the week as some heavier rain moves in.

Like so many human beings, the atmosphere has been stuck in a rut. A front has been stalled nearby, and rainy impulses have rippled along it. That's likely to continue for several more days, Heavener said.

This time of year, the upper-air winds that move storms tend to slacken. Thus, oft times, what's happening, keeps happeneing.

It's just especially cruel in May.

"Everyboy expects to feel better," Brainard said, "and they're disappointed. But it will pass."