Cloud Reigns

Because I lived my earlier years in a high desert area (southeastern Idaho) and the bulk of my adult years in a low desert area (Los Angeles), I really never expect it to rain. When I first came to the northwest, I was astonished at the greenness of everything. Outside of the tropics, I had never seen such an abundance of green plants. The northwest generally lacked, however, the brightness of tropical flowers, although it surely had a wondrous set of spring colors in the rhododendrons and azaleas, for example, that would never be seen in a tropical zone with its harsher reds and oranges.

I knew that the northwestern greenness was connected with the rain; connected in a very immediate way, but still, it surprises me to hear the sound of rain on the skylights when I awaken at night or in the morning, or even when I’m already awake in the middle of the day. This morning, we awoke to a steady rain, and it has continued throughout the day. It takes a lot of rain to get anything growing on the forest floor adequately watered. Especially if the things on the forest floor were put there by the land owner and not by the forest itself. This spring, I planted the abundant lunaria (money plant, silver dollar plant) seedlings that I had grown from seeds throughout the forest areas, and I have surely felt a little silly to have to water these plants all spring because the rain has frequently been light and charming and silvery and not anywhere near heavy enough to penetrate the tree canopy and thus get to the little plants. But today’s rain is getting there and tomorrow’s rain ought to make it even better.

Nationally, of course, there is plenty of folk lore about the rainy northwest. But the fact is, it doesn’t rain all that much here. It’s hard to get accurate figures on annual rainfall; at least it’s hard to get them on the net where the sources may not be altogether reliable. Checking around, it would appear that the annual rainfall here is about 40 inches, which is less than the annual rainfall in southeastern Missouri. If you figure that it rarely rains in July and August here, that means those 40 inches of rain are spread out over the other ten months, which is to say an inch a week. And that seems about right to me. It rarely rains a lot, but it often, a plurality of the time, rains a little. An inch of rain a week, divided into 3 or 4 or 5 of those days in that week, isn’t much rain. And some of those 40 inches come in bigger swoops, leaving even smaller amounts for those other 3 or 4 days.

What the predominant weather of the northwest really is, is cloudy. It’s cloudy an enormous amount of the time. That makes it an easy climate for people with light blue eyes, who are more likely to be sensitive to the glare of sunny locations, like low deserts. The cloudiness makes photography a lot easier and it gives you amazing saturated colors for general visual pleasure. The cloudiness keeps it from being too hot. So there’s quite a lot to be said for cloudiness. When it’s cloudy, you can work in the garden, or go for a walk, or even fly a helicopter if the clouds aren’t too low.

What rain gives you, by contrast, is a need to have projects that require concentrated attention for hours at a time. Even I can’t read eight hours a day, but today I am reminded how nice a rainy day in spring is for getting all those quilting projects that are in midstream out of their closets and onto the design wall. Eight hours won’t even begin to make an impact on them; but then tomorrow may give me another four hours, at least. Hooray for the occasional rain and the reliable clouds that give life focus and variety.