The setting is a schoolroom where Margot and her nine-year-old peers are looking out of windows as the rain outside begins to diminish. As the story opens, Bradbury devotes a long passage to the intensity of the rainfall on Venus. We learn that it has rained nonstop for seven years—thousands upon thousands of days of rain. The rain is sometimes "the sweet crystal fall" of light showers, but it also consists of heavy storms like "tidal waves" that crush forests.

Bradbury starts the story this way so that the reader will know from the outset how important it is that the sun is about to come out for about an hour. This is no ordinary event, as it would be on earth, but a time of great significance that occurs only once every seven years. We also know that none of the children but Margot remember having ever seen sunlight. This is truly a momentous moment for them all.

To further highlight the importance of this hour of sunlight, Bradbury focuses on Margot's happy and vivid memories of the sun. She likens it, as a child would, to gold, a yellow crayon, and a coin "large enough to buy the world with." She remembers its warmth and describes it as like a flower. All of this shows how much she is anticipating its arrival.

This huge buildup causes the reader to feel it all the more painfully when Margot is denied her hour of sunshine.