Sick of Rain

I'm sick of the rain, but do you know what I'm more sick of? Random Seatlites giving SF grief for being tired of the rain. For some reason Seatle has taken us having more rain than we've had in 102 years as a direct insult. All the news reports I see about the rain comes with a quote from some long time Seatle dweller telling us to deal with it. Its as if they're worried that we're going to try to take the "Country's rainiest city" title away from them.

Looking at some statistics though, it look like we could never even approach that title. Why? Because Seattle isn't even close to being the rainiest city. In terms of average rainfall, Seattle gets about 38 in. a year. This paltry amount doesn't even beat South Bend, Indiana which gets 39 in. a year and doesn't even come close to Yakutat, Alaska's 151 in. a year. If you don't want to count snow, there's Hilo, Hawaii at 129 inches.

"Yeah, but its not heavy rain in Seattle", you say, "it just rains all the time". Hmm, well, I guess you could call Seatles recent record of 33 days of consecutive rain a lot. Of course you wouldn't be living in Oahu, Hawaii which got 247 days of consecutive rain in 1994. You also wouldn't be in Otis, Oregon with 79 days of rain, or in Alaska with 69 days of consecutive rain. Yeah, 33 days and 38 inches is rough. You guys are real troopers.

Comments

[Papi Chulo]

Yeah... Having lived in Seattle for five years or so before moving here last May, I can say that the rain there was nowhere near as abusive as it's been for us. There, it does seem to rain quite often, but it's something that's easy to get used to. It's always pretty light, and it usually doesn't last more than 20 minutes at a time, tops. If you're trying to go out and it's raining, you just wait a little while. Here, I've felt like it's pretty much constant.

[djchall]

I lived in Seattle back in the winter of '93-94 (civic highlight of my tenure: Kurt Cobain killing himself) and it never really rained that hard. What was awful were the unending days of thick gray clouds and misty rain-over and over, neverchanging. The sun was a distant dream. A California boy, I became quite SAD and fortunately sublimated my unhappiness by writing a novel instead of taking up heroin or knitting or some other life-killing pursuit.

The bay area is a crazy place because some winters it doesn't rain at all, but then every so often it rains all the time. In my life here I can remember the following years of having apocalpytic rain: eighth grade (81-82), my senior year of high school (85-86), 94-95 and 97-98. When I was in college (86-91) it literally didn't rain at all.

I read an intersting story about the first Spanish settlement in San Francisco. When they arrived they built some adobe buildings like they had down in Mexico and for the first two winters, even though it got a bit chilly, they were fine. Third winter, though, it rained non-stop, and their buildings literally washed away. Half of them died.

- djchall

[Schomer]

The only thing that sucks about hearing people in SF complain about the rain is that it makes me feel worse about being stuck up here in the northwest.

People think we complain too much for the amount of rainfall we get. It's not about the rainfall. You can't look at "inches" and think that tells any kind of story of what it's like to be in Portland. I'd take heavy rainfall that starts and stops, rather than eight months of drizzle.

Try living somewhere, where you only get about 45 days out of the year that are not cloudy. That's the part that is hardest for me, coming from sunny Colorado.

I think I need to start planning a move down there... :-)

[Garth]

Yah, I just updated my post and added the tag 'rant'. I've been to Seatle a few times and I think I understand what it might be like to have the overcast weather all the time that I experienced those weekends. My guess is that its probably close to living in the Outer Richmond or Outer Sunset ;).

Most likely, my frustration comes from local reports who want to give their boring rain story some perspective and so head up to Seatle for a quote which will inevitable be "We got more rain up here sonny boy so stick yer whinning in a pipe and smoke it".