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I've lived all of my life in the PacNW. Rain is a familiar thing.
Where I grew up in Washington, my house looked out over a bay and another green island curled in the navy-blue Sound. Beyond that lay the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which blew the weather into the Sound, up and over Whidbey Island until the rain assaulted my house. It was easy to see it coming, the dark clouds of winter storms casting deep shadows over the water and turning it to slate. But mostly a kind of malaise would set in--this gray cloud cover that constantly dripped water at you in the doldrums of winter would come over Northwest Washington and stay for weeks. Eventually people would begin to question their sanity in choosing to live in such a place--and then all would be saved by a single sunny day where it became painfully apparent why we did live in such a place--it was beautiful.
I moved to Oregon when I was 13 and the Tualatin Valley. It was harder to see the weather coming--suddenly clouds would loom up over the Coast Range and five minutes later everything in sight would be drenched. It rains much harder in Oregon--especially in August. The rainstorms in August are torrential. Now I live in the Willamette Valley, snuggled up against the evergreen hills of the Coast Range, and when the rain comes, it is beautiful. Nevermind I have to walk to class in it--it washes the world clean.
My favorite rain, though? The Pineapple Express. These rains come from leftover monsoons and tropical storms that cross the Pacific and sweep up into the Pacific Northwest in the winter. Suddenly the temperature goes from the low 40s to the mid 50s, and the rain itself is so incredibly warm that it's easy to dance in. The only problem is that when the Pineapple Express comes, it rains so hard that standing water in the road is common and the snow levels go up--meaning snowmelt and flooding. But I love them anyways.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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