Backstory: Hello, 911? It's like totally pouring, I'm serious.

Hate rain? Tired of opening and closing umbrellas? Turned off by unflattering raincoats? Then it's time to move to L.A.

In L.A., "rain is viewed as a slight effrontery," observes Lezlie Johnson, who moved to L.A. from the wetter climes of Northern California 27 years ago.

It's not as if the city doesn't get soaked. An average of 15.11 inches falls here each year, National Weather Service data show.

And yet, says Joel Bartlett, weatherman on KGO-TV in San Francisco, a city that considers rain as normal as organic kale, people in Los Angeles "are apt to be taken by surprise when it rains."

The shock is understandable. It's always, to quote Randy Newman, "another perfect day in L.A." - one more of those sunny, 75-degree days that are as dry as a Noel Coward quip. Skies are usually a cerulean blue. And when clouds appear they're so perfectly cumulus they seem to have been generated at Pixar.

All is not perfection, however. For instance, the reddish-green (occasionally greenish-red) smog that hovers over the San Fernando Valley like an alien space- ship often blocks out much of that beautiful sky. But, confronted by an imperfect day, locals know they can hop on a freeway and soon they'll be gamboling in the Pacific, hiking through a sun-dappled forest, or picnicking in a bucolic meadow.

But when that perfection turned into drizzling skies this week - with a tropical storm that dropped 2 inches of the "wet stuff" on the city (and more in the foothills) from Monday through early Tuesday then, according to meteorologist Bartlett, a sense of "denial" appears. This denial, of course, doesn't extend to those serious storms that can cause devastating mudslides in the rainiest months of the year - January through March, when on average, 60 percent of the year's rain falls.

Instead, this "denial" is more likely to be directed at this week's kind of rain shower that, in other parts of the country (that routinely get 10 times L.A.'s annual rainfall), indeed other parts of California, would be called a drizzle.

That's because southern Californians are totally unprepared for, and unable to deal with, anything less than weather perfection. Whole generations have been raised without understanding the need to wear raincoats, or open umbrellas. Rain gear, if it's owned at all, is relegated to the back of closets or stuffed in car trunks behind beach volleyball nets and straw bags filled with tubes of sunblock. The time-honored trick (in other parts of the country) of not carrying an umbrella or wearing a slicker so it will pour on your parched lawn doesn't work in Los Angeles where people refuse to open an umbrella or don rain gear when it's actually raining.

"[L.A.] is all about image and looking good. And rain is the enemy of that image," suggests James Purcell, a clinical psychologist who adds that "rain ruins your clothes and your looks."

Or as Tom Williams, former editor of Zagat's Nightlife Guide to Los Angeles, says, "Rain would smear your makeup."

Many residents, or their ancestors, moved west to avoid inclement weather. So, when confronted by less than another ideal day, they hide. A very social young man who works for a prominent film production company says when it rains on a weekend, "people just don't go out. The bars and clubs feel a quarter full."

Mr. Williams, a former New Yorker, agrees: "In New York ... if concrete blocks fall from the sky it doesn't bother us. But in Los Angeles where people might have to drive 45 minutes to get to a club on a Saturday night, they'll stay home if it rains."

Mr. Purcell, also a jazz pianist when he's not seeing patients, tells of a singer friend based in Rome who was flown over to play at a private party in Beverly Hills. Except no one showed up. When she asked why, her hosts explained, "Because it's raining."

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