Recently, we Seattleites spent a day enduring the heaviest rainfall during a 24-hour period ever recorded. This last October was also the wettest October ever recorded. This is payback, no doubt, for last summer's untypical endless warm weather.
A somewhat constant ceiling of low, gray, rain-swollen clouds will begin to appear overhead, regularly drifting in from over the western horizon. The daily temperatures have steadily fallen off and each day's daylight hours are getting noticeably shorter.
When we do get those somewhat rare hours of sunlight, we cherish them and bask in them, trying to store up the warmth to be recalled later during the long, long rain months that soon will be here.
I think it's probably time to put away the summer uniform of Aloha shirts and shorts and start rooting around in the bottom of the drawers and the backs of closets for the winter uniform of rugby shirts, wool and long jeans.
Here in the Northwest, it actually doesn't rain all that much, but we do get a constant drizzle that we have to live through.
The visible ceiling gets down to around 300 feet, the mist starts falling, and moss and slugs seem to be everybody's number-one topic of conversation.
"Yeah, it's raining," friends comment. "But does it ever pour hard enough that a complete $500 rain gear outfit is really worth it? This old, handed-down REI Gortex parka will work fine, thank you."
When you look at the annual rainfall of a few other cities around the country, you begin to wonder why we've gotten the bad rap about "heavy rainfall" that is the foremost characteristic attributed to Seattle.
Every year, Seattle averages 37 inches of rainfall. At the same time New York gets 42 inches, Atlanta 49, Miami 56 and Mobile, Alabama, a drenching 64.
The key factor, though, is clear days versus cloudy days. While Seattle averages only 81 clear days versus 201 cloudy ones, New York's ratio is 104/151, Atlanta's 123/144, Miami's 54/118 and Mobile's 104/152.
I bet you always thought Miami was a much sunnier place than it actually is, didn't you? Even though the rain's warm, it's still rain.
Actually, I enjoy the rain. It's on those gray, rainy days that I find it easiest to board myself up in my office and let my Muse run wild as I pound away at the keyboard of my computer.
It's those nice, sunny days on which it's hard to make myself sit down in front of the electronic word machine that's begging to be tickled. Deadline? What deadline?
The sun's out, and I know that soon it will be so gloomy that the moss will even grow on the southern side of the trees.
I've seen bumper-stickers that read: "In Washington, a day without sunshine is just another day." And T-shirts that are emblazoned with the legend: "Seattle Rain Festival - Oct. 1 - June 30." We have that reputation.
One of my favorite Northwest weather quotations comes from Tom Robbins, the popular author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and other major tomes. He gave this explanation as to why he lives in the Northwest, in Edge Walking on the Western Rim: "I'm here for the weather."
"In the deepest, darkest heart of winter," Robbins writes, "when the sky resembles bad banana baby food for months on end, and the witch measles that meteorologists call 'drizzle' are a chronic gray rash on the skin of the land, folks all around me sink into a dismal funk. Many are depressed, a few actually suicidal. But I, I grow happier with each fresh storm, each thickening of the crinkly stratocumulus. 'What's so hot about the sun?' I ask. Sunbeams are a lot like tourists: intruding where they don't belong, little cameras slung around their necks. Raindrops, on the other hand, introverted, feral, buddhistically cool, behave as if they live here. Which, of course, they do."
There are still a few of us who champion the late Emmett Watson and his Lesser Seattle movement. Now, if I could only get my partner to view the approach of winter the same way I do.
Freelance writer Gary McDaniel lives in Magnolia. His column appears in alternate issues of the News.[[In-content Ad]]
