Sensory details are used in the beginning of “All Summer in a Day” to help establish how the rain creates the setting.

Sensory details are descriptive words used to appeal to the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.  Since the story takes place on Venus, a place no one has ever been, Bradbury needs to establish the setting so that we feel as if we are there.

Bradbury begins by describing “thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain.”  We can picture rainy day after rainy day.

[The days were] filled … with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands.

This sensory description of rain appeals to our senses of hearing and smell, by describing the “drum and gush” of rain and the “sweet” showers.  All of these details come together to make us feel as if we are there.