Sheeting Rain

Day 14: That's the view from here. Western Washington is swimming in its first atmospheric river of the season, with something close to an inch having fallen in the last 24 hours at my house. I suppose I should be thankful I don't live in Jamaica, because they're expected to get 30-50 inches of rain over the next two or three days, courtesy of Hurricane Melissa. Melissa is exhibiting behaviours not seen in a hurricane for at least a century, according to one source, and it is guaranteed to bring catastrophic flooding and landslides to the island. On this end, though, I'm dealing with the "first-world problem" of not having adequate heat, and I'm getting no action from any of the companies I've contacted with respect to getting hard copies of estimates to submit to the PUD in the hopes of qualifying for a low-income grant. In fact, I have not even received the application forms from the PUD, and it's been almost a week since I requested them. Meanwhile, I'm using a wall heater which is barely up to the task of keeping the living room warm. But unlike the unfortunate residents of Jamaica, I can put on another layer of fleece, grab and blanket and a cat, and a cup of hot tea. At least I still have power (she says, knocking firmly on wood).

Measurable Precipitation

Day 290: Years ago before I had internet access, I used to get my weather forecasts via NOAA's "Weather Radio." Reception here was rather poor, and it was not helped any by NOAA's upgrade to a computerized voice. I'm sure you remember those early synthesized voices: tinny, riddled with misplaced emphasis and clumsy pronunciation. NOAA's "announcer" had two in particular which took me forever to sort out because the misspoken phrases were so apt for our area. The first was "the rain forecast" which was followed by a forecast for Puget Sound and the Pacific Coast. Eventually, I realized that "the-rain" was supposed to be "ma-rine" by sorting it out in context. The second was even more hilarious. When a system was approaching, NOAA would give the percentage "chance of miserable precipitation" for the upcoming five days. As you might have figured out (and more quickly than I did!), "miserable" was "measurable." I bring this up today because we are having our first "miserable precipitation" for the month of July, a whole quarter inch so far, leaving plants, critters and firefighters much happier.

Pacific Northwe't

Day 52: Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but when people ask if I like the Pacific Northwest, the first thing I do is correct their spelling. It's "Pacific Northwe't," folks. I don't know how that S got in there, but it doesn't belong. Historically, November and March are our wet months. We were close to average in November 2023 with 6.23" of rain (that's 15.8cm to you metric types), not enough to float a battleship but definitely enough to drown a duck. Even so, it's not the wet which sends us natives mad. It's the gloom. I doubt there's one person in a hundred, maybe in a thousand or ten thousand who doesn't suffer some degree of Seasonal Affective Disorder here (that's aptly abbreviated to "SAD"). I have to tell you, I'm anxiously awaiting the solstice. My mind won't register those first few extra seconds of daylight, but my body will. I'll be cheerier by Christmas than I was on the 20th, and by New Year's Day, I'll begin to consciously note that it isn't quite as pitch-bloomin'-bloody-black-dark at 4:15 PM as it was two weeks earlier. Mornings don't bother me. I'm up well before the sun at any time of year, but when it starts feeling like bedtime before I've had dinner, I get a little grumpy. Still, I kinda wish it would dry out just a little, if you know what I mean.

Diamonds

Day 285: Diamonds. Or perhaps more precious than. In the last twenty-four hours, my pluviometer registered a little more than a quarter inch of rain, the first which has fallen since June 21st. That may not seem significant to those of you who live in drier climates, but to a Pacific Northwesterner, the absence of rain for such a protracted period is something worthy of remark. By now, the moss on car bumpers has dried up, the green nothern faces of our homes have turned brown, and we've all invested in several gallons of skin moisturizer. We're worried about forest fires, grass fires, idiot-fool campers' campfires because we are surrounded by timber/tinder. But taking a broader view sends cold winter chills up our spines as the rest of the country is withering in unprecedented heat. Diamonds, precious diamonds are scattered in my yard.

Easter Eggs In November

Day 23: When it's raining buckets, when it's pouring down a real gully-washer and the skies are so dark it looks like midnight at noon, the folks at Davis Instruments have come up with a cure for SAD: easter eggs in their weather displays. This isn't the first time I have seen "Its raining cats n dogs." After all, I do live in the Pacific Northwest, but apparently that particular phrase is reserved for times when the rainfall exceeds a certain rate per minute, as it was yesterday when we were having a right frog-strangler, and it always makes me laugh. I suspect there are other little gems which I haven't encountered, e.g., those which might appear in tornado country or a hurricane-prone region, but thank you, I'll leave those for someone else to discover. However, it was only a day or two ago that I spotted the announcement of a meteor shower (a rather unhelpful mention given the circumstances of a surfeit of precipitation), and was rather surprised that I hadn't noticed this type of information for any previous astronomical event. What else have you built in, Davis? If it goes below zero, are you going to tell me it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey? I need to pay closer attention to this instrument.

Fruits Of My Labours

Day 297: Much needed rain has fallen overnight, the first since the last day of June. The pluviometer registered 0.01" one dewy morning in July, perhaps weighted by a spider which had set up housekeeping in the idle drain. The garden is grateful for the moisture, as am I. A native to the Pacific Northwest, my nerves wear raw when they are compelled to endure hot temperatures and bright sunlight for any length of time. As I entered the Berry Pen through the kiwi-vine covered archway, a shower of cold beads fell on my head and shoulders, streaked my glasses, shattered on my exposed arms foretelling of autumn and its promised harvest of Sungold tomatoes and miniature cucumbers, benevolent drops whose touch was as welcome on my skin as on the foliage of my vegetables. Rain! Real rain! If I didn't have neighbours, I'd dance naked in it.

Pacific Northwe't

Day 34: There's a good reason you don't see a lot of solar panels on western Washington homes, and you can bet dollars to donuts that the houses with impressive roof arrays were either constructed by contractors from sunnier climes or are owned by inveterate optimists. Admittedly, climate change has extended our nice weather by a few weeks over the last two decades, but by and large, three-quarters of the year could be termed "gloomy" for want of a better word. It's no wonder that so many of us claim to be subject to Seasonal Affective Disorder. We only have two seasons: Tourist, and Miserable. The last week has been one wet push after another, sometimes blustering and blowing for variety, sometimes tempting us out of our dens with "sucker holes," those brief and small windows in the cloud cover where we may get a glimpse of near-mythologic sunlight. No one really believes there's a glowing yellow orb up there. That's as crazy as flat-eartherism. The trade-off is that we're abundantly and profusely green in hue. Our forests glow with every imaginable shade of verdure, never mind that the moss beneath our fingernails and lichens behind our ears may go a little brown during August. While our friends in other states are revelling in sunshine, when it appears here, we natives complain that it is too bright, too hot, and begin counting the days since our last significant rainfall. This, my dear readers, is the Pacific Northwe't, and we wouldn't trade it for all the beaches in California.

A Bit On The Wet Side

Day 116: Murphy's Law went into effect right at the start of the current round of torrential rain. I joke that my pluviometer drowned, but I think at 25+ years old, the sensor simply decided to retire from service. It had certainly performed its job admirably, but its timing could have been better. Fortunately, I had a cheap plastic replacement stashed for just such an eventuality, although this means that whatever the weather, I will be obligated to empty it manually and on a daily basis until I can find an affordable replacement.

That said, it's wet. Above me, Hwy 706 is closed at Kernahan Road following a landslide and water over the roadway at Copper Creek. Below me, the ditches are running over their banks, leaving cars and trucks to hydroplane through several inches of runoff. Before it could get any worse, I made a dash for the library and the grocery store, otherwise stopping only to take a few photos. The Nisqually has spread at the east end of Alder Lake, although it's still within its banks; the Mashel in Eatonville is raging and turbid. I'm safe, but the Park is closed due to landslide threat, and friends upstream of me where the valley narrows and runoff is greater are undoubtedly much concerned as to what may happen if the rain continues.

Lecanora Pacifica And Friends

Day 108: I'm taking advantage of the shelter afforded by my carport to acquaint myself with the luxurious lichen population growing on the wisteria. I'd never really looked at it closely, and therefore was unaware that its main trunk, as big around as my biceps, shows hardly any bark at all between colonies of assorted Lecanoras and some sooty-black Mycoblastus. Lecanora pacifica seems to dominate, its greenish disks often layering over one another on the shady side. In fact, I've spent a lot of this month analyzing bark and fence rails in my yard, unwilling to brave the incessant rain.

Let me put this in perspective for you. I've been keeping weather records more or less continuously since March 1975, here since 1990 and near Olympia prior to that date. Average annual rainfall at my present location is roughly 45" per year. There have been years when it was substantially lower, and there have been a few when it was significantly higher. We usually get our heaviest precipitation in November and March and occasionally in January. We are having one of those drenching January deviations. There has not been a single day in 2020 that I have not recorded precipitation in some form or another, maybe a few snowflakes or a light shower, or maybe an utter downpour. In any event, as of 1:59 PM today, my gauge shows a total of 10.38". We still have two and a half days to go.

I do not hike in the rain. I did my time in the rain when I worked at Carbon River, penetrating rain which demonstrated that the Goretex of the era wasn't quite as refined as the manufacturers claimed. I often came back from my patrols soaked to the bone and mud up to the neck (or farther). I figure I've put in my share of drowned hours, but now I can pick my hiking days according to the forecast. That's not to say I won't hike in light drizzle, but I will not, repeat not go out in a frog-strangler unless I am compelled to do so by unassailable reason. Today I am wondering: does wanting to kill something count? I NEED OUT!

Squirrels In The Mist

Day 303: Friday and Saturday were our two annual volunteer recognition picnics. The first is held at Longmire where we have use of the historic Community Building. The second is at Sunrise and, although we have the option to hold it indoors if the weather is bad, we're usually willing to put up with a light chill and/or sprinkles to have it in the picnic area. This year, the decision was made with a metaphorical flip of a coin as Rovers and other volunteers began to gather after having spent time on the trail. We set up a grill in the mist-shrouded picnic area and watched as several Cascade Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (Callospermophilus saturatus) enjoyed their own personal harvests. This pudgy little moocher had what appeared to be a mushroom in its hands, but whether it had been gathered from nature or was the ill-gotten gain from some visitor's lunch was debatable. I thought the stem looked rather too neatly sliced to have been anything other than commercially raised, but the mist might have been distorting my view. As for the picnic, at the end of the first hour, a few raindrops began falling. Within five minutes, a deluge dropped, bringing the festivities to a hasty and soggy close.

Affective

Day 76: More pungent than the scent of fresh-baked bread, heavier than the lap-weighted soul-comfort of a purring cat, more attention-demanding than any puzzle or project, a seasonally-affective day in the Pacific Northwest clings to shrub and window with all the persistence of a stubborn tick and just as welcome. I know my cheery chickadees are out there because I can hear them when the heat pump stops roaring in its hyper-heat voice and the muttering rills of rain subside. Every now and then, a flash of white catches my eye, but I can't tell if it's a 'dee or a junco's tailfeathers. Steller's Jays are crayon smears on the feeders, Towhees indistinct black gobs on the ground below. They might as well be molehills, but for the fact that they move, occasionally casting themselves into the abstractionist blur of the filbert. I suppose I should be glad to be indoors and warm, unlike my feathered friends, but somewhere along the line I was plagued with the ability to recognize that things could be better. I do not readily accept my lot; they do. I wish I was a bird.

Rain At Last

Day 317: It is raining in earnest now after a few drops last night which failed to register a single hundredth in the pluviometer and a piddling drizzle earlier this morning, raining with the gusto of Ma Nature turned washerwoman, discontent with smoke-soiled air. It's not pouring, but neither is it a mere sprinkle; it knits liquid beads into the leafy lacery of the garden, dangles them from bough and branch, swags of silver along each thread of fence wire and electric line. The pavement shines, the gravel of the driveway turns dark with damp, and the scent of summer's dotage calls back memories of sidewalks past, their dust dying beneath a wash of wet. It is a sign of the season's turning, the beginning curve of a spiral which will grow increasingly narrow, carrying us into a swirl of autumn and winter. The days of smoke and haze and heat are coming apart at the seams, and although in ways I lament the briefness of good hiking weather, this dried-out Pacific Northwesterner is still inclined to shout, "Hurrah! It's raining at last!"

When Is Spring Coming?

Day 145: Today's interrogative is "When?" as in "When is spring coming?" Of course it could also have been "What?" for "What in the hell is she doing?" or even "How?" for "How did she ever get brave enough to do that?" but I'll just go with "When?" because I keep asking myself "When is it going to warm up?"

The subject of planking came up in a discussion a few days ago. I've only planked once before, and that was in front of the old WDFW building in Morton, and the selfie I took on that occasion so impressed the friend who worked in the office there that he mentioned it to his grandmother, whereupon she planked in a somewhat less public location (a table) so he could get a shot. Technically, planking is supposed to occur in public places; my yard was public enough, with a stream of snow-bunnies and snowplows heading up the road, casting curious glances and possibly making furtive phone calls to the local funny farm to alert them to a potential pickup. The truth of the matter is that it took me four hours to work up my courage to do this, largely because the temperature has risen just enough that the snow has turned to rain and what's in the yard is extremely mushy and wet.

There's a lesson in this, and that is that you can endure almost anything if you only have to do it once. You would only have to do it once if you had thought to take more careful measurements and didn't get your head out of the frame on the first go.

Jewelled City

Day 97: As I was leaving a young friend's birthday celebration last night under hard rain, I was taken by the sparkle and shimmer of Eatonville's city lights as they were magnified and distorted in the droplets on my windshield. I am not often out after dark, so although this may seem commonplace to many of my readers, it was a visual treat for me, the colours glittering like so many jewels laid on velvet.

Honeysuckle

Day 256: It's taken a decade for a commercially-grown Honeysuckle vine to establish at the corner of my garage, a fact I can only attribute to poor soil, although I've seen the wild version root in some pretty unlikely locations. I had visions of a paradise for hummingbirds when I planted it, but in its first few years, it put on only a few blossoms and fell prey to some critter which mined the leaves. I was on the verge of pulling it out, possibly moving it to a new location until it surprised me this year by putting on a spectacular show of bright orange blooms. Nothing says "summer" quite like Honeysuckle after a rain shower!

In My Element

Day 152: I am becoming one with the lichens, and I don't mean to imply any metaphysical connection but rather a purely physical one. During this fitness challenge, I have put in a couple of hundred miles walking in the rain. Oh, I've been wetter in my career as an outdoors person. My mom and I spent six weeks backpacking in what felt like a continuous downpour, returning from one trip just long enough to swap out sodden clothes for dry ones before launching on another adventure. We were tenting at Blue Glacier in the Olympics on a night when four inches of precipitation fell, the humidity so high that it "rained" inside the tent and left us sleeping in a pool on the tent floor. I've done my time in the rain, and I swore I wasn't going to walk in it for the challenge, but here I am, and lichens, moss and fungi are beginning to sprout on various portions of my anatomy.

Rain is a fact of life in the Pacific Northwest. If you're a native, you accept it and go about your business in Goretex and coated nylon. You grouse and grumble and expect sympathy from people who live in drier climates, but you don't let it keep you from enjoying yourself. The only time rain upsets you is when it stops...stops just as you arrive home from a walk in a drencher.

I missed most (but not all) of the downpour this morning on my trip up to the Big Bridge on the horse trail. It sprinkled, it drizzled, it rained, and only hosed down for about fifteen minutes, but it was never dry, not until I closed the front door behind me, stripped off my dripping jacket and trousers and hung them in the shower. Then it stopped. Then a faint light emerged, not quite strong enough to cast shadows, but sufficient to dispel any rumours of the non-existence of old Sol. The grass took on a yellow cast and mist began rising between the ridges. It was and is tempting to go out for another walk, but I know how this works. In the time it takes to suit up for the inevitable possibility of more rain, it would start falling just as I stepped over the threshold.