Was just talking to my wife about how I like to be protected from the rain by a small structure and just watch it rain. I was only able to describe it as some sort of primal thing. When we were kids my sister and I would stand inside the shed in the backyard with the door open, watching the rain for like an hour or two.
I regularly simulate this experience in a meager fashion using Rainy Mood, which has stood the test of time for me by including a wider range of sounds than just rain (the hum of what might be a truck on passing on a distant road, the occasional birdsong, etc.). While there's no comparing to the full experience (the visible variations in the density of the rain as distant, slow-moving curtains, the smell and movement of the air, the palpable humidity), a sufficiently rich soundscape still manages to evoke enough that I can much more easily imagine the rest.
