"Everyone talks about the weather"

7 September, 2000

I live in a city that has a certain reputation, weather-wise. It rains alot, in Seattle. That's why the "green's the greenest green" here. Anything that stands still too long in the cool half of the year tends to get mossy.

It doesn't rain constantly, and that friend of yours who claims he spent a year here once and only saw the sun six times is exaggerating.* The wettest, darkest, dankest winter in the last 160 years had 24 days of partial-to-full sun. And we had a hot, dry summer that year, to boot.

That being said, it takes a special kind of person to live here. A lot of folks who move to Seattle from other parts of the country, even just the other side of the mountains, find it tough to stay. It's not just the long rainy winter, preceeded by a cool, drizzly autumn and followed by a wet, warm spring. It's not even that summer never begins before July 4th (although I have seen a number of newcomers done in by June; they held out through a rainy season that exceeded their wildest imagination on the hope of normal weather come summer, and no one ever warned them that June is not a summer month, here). No, I think what really does people in are the microclimates.

You've probably heard the old joke, "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes." Ha! That's a boring and stable climate. In Seattle the real situation is, "Don't like the weather? Try down the street."

A few years ago I was caught in a flash-flood down one street. One moment the water on the road was less than an inch deep, the next it was over my hood. It choked out my engine and I was stuck for about an hour. I was on my way to a meeting. I was only an 8 minute drive (through heavy city traffic) from the meeting place. I called to say I was caught in the flood and awaiting a tow truck. The person who answered the phone hadn't realized it was raining. She looked out the window and told me that the sun was shining and the sidewalk was still dry.

One time when it was raining lightly I needed to drop something off and someone's house. They only lived about 10-14 blocks north of me, so I decided to walk. I though that the rain was giving way to a fog bank north of me. That's what it looked like. I was wrong. It was snowing at my friend's house. It had been for some time, because she had more than an inch on her yard. When I walked back home, not only wasn't it raining, but the sun had broken through and it was actually warm out.

Almost no one in Seattle owns an umbrella. Everyone who has lived here long has about a dozen pair of sunglasses and five or six different weights of jacket. You need so many because you have to stash them all over. You never know when you're going to need to bundle up and remove a few layers. And you never know when it'll go from gloomy over cast to blindingly bright.

So, just last Friday I was walking home in my shorts, a hawaiian shirt, sunglasses and light-colored cap to reflect the heat away. It was bright and warm and gorgeous. It was summer.

This morning I stood at the bus stop wearing long pants, a shirt and under shirt and a jacket... and was seriously wondering if it isn't already time to get out a heavier coat. We had thick pea-soup fog that still hasn't burned off. It's been cool and drizzly since the day after the holiday. It's autumn. Nature gave us no preample, it just delivered it smack on our doorsteps.

But that's okay. I love the weather here. I love the soft, silent misty rain we get some days. I love the pounding torrential drenching we get others. I love the fog. I love the vivd blue of the sky when the clouds go away. I love the way, during summer, that the sun stays up until well past 9:00 pm. I love to see pansies blooming in my flower beds just before Christmas.

I'm going to enjoy walking home in this just as much as I liked the sun and heat. Oh, yes, next spring I'll revel in the first warm, sunny walk home, but right now, I'm enjoying autumn. When it rains really hard it's not much fun being soaked to the bone. But it's makes the arrival home so much nicer. You appreciate getting out of the rain. And then I love gazing out a window as the rain continues to pound down, a cup of coffee or tea in my hand.

The old joke goes, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."

For me, it's "Everyone talks about the weather, but so few get out and love it."

I will.

* I've heard this story from a large number of my friends, in several parts of the country. They each swear they have a friend who swears on a stack of Bibles that this is what happened to them one year here. I've started to wonder if they're all quoting a single comedian or if this thing has turned into our own urban legend. I dunno. I just know that the weather archives don't support the claim. But I guess it makes for a good laugh. If it means that people who wouldn't enjoy being here anyway don't make the mistake of moving here, I guess it's a good thing. Back to the main essay.

This page is copyright 2000 by Gene Breshears. Photograph is copyright 1998 by Julie Rampke. All Rights Reserved.