What was going on when I was born?

When the rains came to the Middle Atlantic states a week ago yesterday, meteorologists knew that this would be no light drizzle. They could see by their charts and satellite photographs that tropical winds from the southeast were converging with the remnants of Hurricane Juan to generate a downpour. But weather forecasters said they, like most people, were surprised by the deluge that followed. From Saturday to Monday night, as much as 18 inches of rain fell in parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, causing creeks and rivers to overflow throughout Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said today that it had concluded the Jewish Defense League was ''the possible responsible group'' in recent bomb attacks against an Arab leader in California and two East Coast men with purported Nazi ties. Two of the attacks resulted in deaths. The national leader of the Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin of Los Angeles, said today that his group had nothing to do with the bombings. The most recent bombing, in Santa Ana, Calif., last month, killed Alex M. Odeh, the 41-year-old leader of an Arab-American organization, and injured seven people.

The death toll in the guerrilla attack on the Palace of Justice here rose to about 100 today as medical teams searched the charred and bullet-scarred building for bodies. At least nine judges, including the President of Colombia's Supreme Court, were among the dead. Soldiers and police ended a 28-hour siege of the palace by rebels of the organization known as M-19 with a dramatic assault Thursday afternoon. The Government of President Belisario Betancur has issued no official statement on casualties or provided other details of the incident.

The Central Intelligence Agency today issued a biography of Vitaly S. Yurchenko, characterizing him as a senior Soviet spy who rose to the military rank of ''General-designate'' in a 25-year career with the K.G.B. The action by the C.I.A., which almost never makes public products of its intelligence-gathering, may have been part of an effort to counter questions raised by some Administration officials and members of Congress about the significance of Mr. Yurchenko's defection and the value of the information he provided in three months of interrogation before he apparently decided last week to return the Soviet Union. The agency's biography outlines in detail Mr. Yurchenko's responsibilities in a succession of increasingly significant assignments, providing an unusual case history of a Soviet intelligence operative. The agency, however, did not give any information on whatever data Mr. Yurchenko provided to the United States. Glimpse of Soviet Intelligence Titled ''Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko,'' the document offers several intriguing glimpses at one of the Kremlin's most secret organizations. It cryptically notes that at one point in his career, Mr. Yurchenko was responsible for use of ''special drugs.''

A letter of appeal to President Reagan that was apparently signed by four American hostages was delivered today to a Western news agency here. In the letter, the hostages called on Mr. Reagan to reconsider his refusal to negotiate with their captors, who are believed to be Moslem fundamentalists. [In Washington, the Reagan Administration again rejected the idea of negotiating with the captors. ''The United States policy on negotiation with terrorists has not changed,'' said Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman.] Letter Follows Phone Call The appeal to Mr. Reagan, along with a bundle of letters in what appeared to be the hostages' handwriting, was delivered to The Associated Press bureau here. It arrived a day after an anonymous caller telephoned a Western news agency here and said all six Americans believed to be held hostage in Lebanon had been killed. The caller, who spoke Arabic, purported to represent the Islamic Holy War organization, a secret group believed to be made up of Shiite activists who espouse the principles of the Islamic revolution in Iran.

President Reagan sought today to lower expectations about progress at his summit meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. At the same time, some of Mr. Reagan's top advisers said efforts were under way to encourage progress on arms control. Mr. Reagan told Republican Congressional leaders at a White House meeting that he expected difficulty in bringing about a ''genuine improvement'' in relations with Moscow. But in a decidedly more optimistic assessment, Mr. Reagan's chief arms control adviser, Paul H. Nitze, said the United States was not giving up on the prospect of progress in the arms talks in Geneva. Despite wide gaps between the two sides, he said, the Administration is working on a set of guidelines to give a fresh stimulus to the talks.

An Air Force psychiatrist who interviewed a Ukrainian sailor near New Orleans last week believes the young seaman probably reversed his decision to defect after officers on his ship made ''threats'' about the safety of his parents. The doctor's seven-page report was issued today by the State Department as White House officials debated whether to keep the Soviet freighter, now docked in the Mississippi River, from leaving until American officials could interview the seaman again. Senate aides said today that they had succeeded in serving a subpoena for the sailor, Miroslav Medved, to appear before the Agriculture Committee, although the Soviet authorities did not willingly take delivery of the subpoena. Legal specialists said the subpoena would become an international problem only if the Administration decided it had to help the committee enforce it by detaining the ship, the Marshal Konev. [Page 6.] Competent to Make Decision The psychiatrist, Maj. William M. Hunt 3d, interviewed Mr. Medved twice last week after the 25-year-old sailor had jumped ship, been returned by immigration agents, and then brought back for further interviews with American officials.

Shortly after 10 A.M. today Michigan balanced its books for the first time in 10 years when state officials made the final payment on a debt that once totaled $1.7 billion. For a state that only two years ago was facing insolvency and battling soaring unemployment, it was something to celebrate. It was also a milestone in the Middle West's recovery from a recession that hit the region's smokestack industries harder than anything since the Great Depression. By rethinking its relationship to major industries and jobs, the Middle West has recovered financially. Helped by a more efficient automobile industry and its record profits in 1983 and 1984, the region has been courting new companies and diversifying as manufacturing jobs have been supplanted by high-technology and service industries.

In these dry, hot lands of southeastern Angola, a war is being planned and fought. And if the wishes of Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader, and some Americans are realized, the United States will soon be associated with the insurgency through the supply of nonlethal aid. The conflict is presented by the South African-backed Mr. Savimbi, and by some in Washington, as a fight against Soviet encroachment in southern Africa, since his enemy, the Marxist Government in Luanda, is backed by the Soviet Union and kept in power by a Cuban force estimated to number 25,000 to 30,000. Yet the war - in which Mr. Savimbi recently claimed a major victory against Government forces on the banks of the Lomba River, north of here - is part of a tangle of regional disputes. The Angolan war, if it is ever clearly won or lost, could thus determine events and mold policies from Kinshasa, in Zaire, to Pretoria and its surrogate government in South-West Africa, widely known as Namibia, to the south of here.

President Ferdinand E. Marcos said today that he would submit a letter of resignation Monday to pave the way for elections early next year, but that he would nonetheless remain in office. ''If we must be technical,'' he said, ''I ask the question: when the constitution says resignation, does it say immediate resignation? It does not.'' His announcement, at the end of a party caucus, was in response to opposition criticism that his plan to call an election without first resigning to create a vacancy would be unconstitutional. Mr. Marcos said he would send the letter of resignation to the National Assembly on Monday along with his proposal for an election in January. But he said the resignation would take effect only upon the assumption of office of the winner of the election.

A spokesman for the environmentalist group Greenpeace said France agreed today to pay compensation to the family of a Dutch photographer killed in the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in July. The spokesman, Ron van Huizen, was referring to reported negotiations between the French Government and Leo Spigt, an Amsterdam lawyer who represents the family of the photographer, Fernando Pereira.

The Government took court action today against a prominent South African newspaper editor for publishing an interview with a black nationalist adversary. The action came on a day of sharpening confrontation between the authorities and foreign correspondents. Tony Heard, editor of the Cape Times newspaper, was charged under the Internal Security Act in a magistrates' court. He was accused of quoting what is called a banned person by publishing an interview Monday with Oliver Tambo, a leader of the outlawed and exiled African National Congress.