Songfacts®:

• In this swampy song, love washes over John Hiatt like rain, building into a hurricane of passion. The song has two specific inspirations: his wife, and Louisiana.
  
  Hiatt was newly married to his third wife, Nancy, when he wrote the song, and he had a new backing band that included guitarist Sonny Landreth and drummer Kenneth Blevins, who are both from Louisiana. We know the setting because Hiatt mentions Lake Pontchartrain in the lyric.
• Hiatt explained the song's meaning to HBO: "It came out as a song about inclement weather. It's a song about what's good about trouble. If you can't make something good out of trouble, then it's just trouble. I don't think you can rejoice without having been in the darkness."
• "Feels Like Rain" is part of John Hiatt's Slow Turning album, part of a career revival after he got sober a few years earlier. The title track earned him some airplay, but Hiatt's songs are best known via covers from more famous artists. "Feels Like Rain" was recorded by Buddy Guy with Bonnie Raitt as the title song to his 1993 album, which won for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Raitt had previously covered Hiatt's "Thing Called Love."
• The song took on new meaning after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. The figurative lyric about a hurricane striking the area became quite real, and many found strength in the song as they worked to recover.
• Hiatt performs this song in a 2011 episode of the HBO series Treme that was written by Tom Piazza around the song and also titled "Feels Like Rain." Treme is set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
  
  After Hiatt plays the song in the episode, there's a scene where two musicians discuss it, breaking down how the lyric reveals itself later in the song to be about love, not weather. One of the characters in this scene, Harley, is played by real-life musician Steve Earle.