If you've ever lived in an older mobile home, you know there's an intimate relationship with rain. From the very first drop you hear it, a thud on the roof of the house, a tinny plink on aluminum awnings.

That's what woke us in the dark of morning, the rain on the roof, and when daybreak showed that the storm had slowed, we headed to Point Dume, the perfect place to track the clouds' trajectories.