Tag Archives: Weather

Why Seattleites don’t use umbrellas

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I’ve been asked the question many times: as rainy as Seattle is, why don’t any of you have umbrellas? The answer is surprisingly logical, but it takes awhile to explain.

First, despite the reputation, Seattle isn’t as rainy as you think. Manhattan gets more precipitation per year than Seattle, for example. Now, it’s true that within an hour’s drive of Seattle are rain forests that get far more rain than that, but because of mountain ranges to the east and west, plus the the enormous heat sink that is the Puget Sound (an arm of the Pacific Ocean) on one side, and the slightly less enormous heat sink of Lake Washington on the other side, we have weird weather patterns that pushes a lot of the moisture into a convergence zone north of us.

One reason the people who visit or move here from other places think it rains more than it does is because we have many, many, many days of overcast with cool temps and a damp feeling in the air—but not rain. It feels like rain, or at least as if it must have just been raining minutes ago and you just missed it. So they think of some days as rainy when there wasn’t any actual rain.

When we do have rain, all that geography I mentioned means it might be drizzling in one neighborhood, but dry as a bone only a few blocks away.

The rain itself often comes as such a light drizzle that it feels more like a heavy fog or mist than rain. On days like that, it doesn’t matter whether you have an umbrella. If you’re walking, you get damper and damper and damper just from colliding with those micro droplets that seem to hang suspended, rather than fall.

We have a variant of that, where the rain is coming down as perceptible drops, but each seems to be accompanied by a host of the micro droplets. So it feels like you’re immersed. One of my friends describes it as, “It’s like there’s no difference between the air and the river or lake or whichever body of water is nearest.”

On those very rare occasions where the rain is very heavy, it’s almost always horizontal, because it is almost always accompanied by a strong wind. Again, a regular umbrella is useless against that (and is likely to be more of a bother, as the wind keeps trying to yank it away).

While we’re on the subject of wind, we have lots of places where the wind is constant. My office is a few hundred feet from the water front, and the first two miles of my walk home from work is similarly very close to the water. There is a constant airflow either toward the water or away from it in that zone. Because it is constant, it often doesn’t feel like a breeze. It seems to be almost nothing. You notice it most on either very warm days or cold ones. Because if the breeze is coming off the water, it’s always cold. So when the weather is uncomfortably warm, the side of you body facing the water feels noticeably cooler than the other side. If the overall weather is cold, that same breeze makes one side of your body feel as if it has already frozen, and the other side is significantly less frigid.

I’ve watched people try to walk with umbrellas in that part of town a lot. I assume most of them are tourists, as there are a lot of tourist places in the neighborhood. Even though it doesn’t feel like much of a breeze, people are fighting with the umbrellas at every corner. That airflow is sneaky that way. While you’re walking along beside a building, you feel a slight tug on the umbrella, but it’s easy to hang onto. Suddenly, as you get to the intersection, the pressure starts ramping up. Again, it doesn’t feel like an actual wind in your face, yet the umbrella is suddenly yanking and swooping and surging like a living thing trying to escape you.

In between the extremes I described above, we have rain that is a bit more like what people from other parts of the world think of as rain, and on those rare days an umbrella can be helpful—for the three to five minutes it actually is raining at the spot you happen to be at. So, for three to five minutes, ten or eleven days out of the entire year, an umbrella can be useful.

I’m not a native Seattleite. So when I first moved here, I owned an umbrella—for a while I owned a few of those compact collapsing umbrellas, plus one traditional big umbrella. I tried different strategies, such as keeping one at the office, one at home, and one in the car, so I would always have one handy. Or I carried a compact one around in my backpack. The problem remained that either I didn’t happen to have it near me when it would have been useful, or I’d have problems because of the wind, or by the time I dug it out and deployed it, the rain had either stopped, or shifted to the misty drizzle.

Most of the year one needs to have at least a light jacket handy, because it can go from sunny and pleasant to overcast and cold multiple times a day. Similarly, you need to have some sunglasses nearby, because those sun breaks can be quite blinding. You will use sunglasses hundreds, maybe thousands of times a year. But an umbrella will only be useful, at the very most, a dozen times a year.

And that’s why most Seattleites don’t use umbrellas—but almost all of us have spare pairs of sunglasses stashed around.

Acclimated

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“Bring your coat; it’s cold out!”

I was reminded recently of the last time I visited Arizona. It was 1982. I was attending college1 in southwest Washington. My mom, who had remarried a couple years before, was living in Phoenix with my stepdad and the older of my sisters2.

My sister was getting married3 on Christmas Eve, so I came to visit for Christmas break to attend the wedding and have Christmas with Mom.

Every time we left the house, Mom would urge me to bring my coat. And everywhere I went, I wound up carrying my coat draped over one arm. I regretted not packing several pairs of shorts. The temperature, as I recall, never dropped below the low 60s (Farenheit)4. My Mom and Step-dad weren’t the only people wearing coats at the restaurants, movie theaters, and so on. I was sweating, but surrounded by an entire city of people practically shivering from the “cold.”

December in Phoenix, at least that year, was like June in Seattle.

On the other hand, I start complaining about the heat when the temperature gets up into the high 70s—and whining by the upper 80s—which makes friends who live in Phoenix (and Texas, southern California, Florida, et cetera) laugh5. Since for only two or three weeks in August or July does Seattle temperatures get into what most people would classify as summer-ish, my tolerance for heat is nearly non-existent.

Mom’s acclimation to Phoenix winter was particularly amusing to me, because during my childhood we lived in much, much colder places. During my junior high years, for instance, one of my morning chores during winter months was to carry an extension cord out to the driveway and plug-in the engine block heater for Mom’s car. It was actually two heaters: one built into the oil pan, the other into the coolant system. It warmed up the engine block enough to make the car start easily in the cold. On those mornings where the thermometer out on our front porch showed the temperature was colder that -10°F (-23°C), I had to string the second extension cord out to plug in the engine block heater for Dad’s pickup.

It got cold enough to justify the second extension cord at least a couple dozen times each winter.

Some years ago when on Christmas Eve I called my grandmother who still lives in that small Colorado town, she told me it hadn’t been a terribly cold Christmas thus far. “We only got to 25-below6 once or twice this week!”7

And one of my cousins who was there chimed in that the windchill factor was only “minus fifteen.”

Mom lived in that part of the country for a good 18 years, yet only a year or so in Phoenix was all it took for her to start thinking that what I considered early summer weather required a coat. Not a jacket, but a coat!

People are adaptable. We get used to the environment we’re in (physical, emotional, or cultural), adjusting our comfort levels without concious thought. Adaptability is a good thing. It doesn’t hurt, every now and then, to try to step outside yourself and look at what you’ve learned to accept as normal. In the abstract, are those really good things? Is this really where you want to be? Are you really who you want to be?

Similarly, are the people you disagree with just looking at things from a different perspective? Just because I think it’s madness to wear a coat when the temperature is in the upper 60s doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Not in the way they would be if they were huddled under an umbrella complaining about getting wet when the sun is shining and the precipitation is zero.

It’s important to distinguish between the way a person reacts to facts and the facts themselves.

1. During the long stretch of attending part-time, while living with my grandparents and working several jobs.

2. Our younger half-sister was living with my dad and stepmother back in Utah.

3. Which is a story so convoluted that if I used it in the plot of a novel, critics would universally pan the book as being totally unbelievable.

4. I have been known to be out and about wearing shorts when the temperature is 50°F (10°C)—and sometimes colder.

5. Of course, the last time I was in Texas in the summer, I noticed how many people spent those hot, muggy months inside their homes air-conditioned down to the lower 70s, riding in air-conditioned cars to sit in restaurants or churches air-conditioned down to the upper 60s, so I’m not sure they have as much to laugh about as they think.

6. That’s -25°F, or -30°C.

7. Just today my half-sister, who lives nearby, commented that the high temperature this week had been 6°, or -14°C.

Frightful weather

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I thought I was going to drown.

While Seattle is known for rain, most of the time what he actually experience is overcast days, with occasional scattered misting. We very, very seldom have downpours. Even the heavier showers tend to be intermittent and scattered.

But about once every winter I get caught in a true downpour that soaks through my waterproofed leather coat, and all the layers underneath.

Last night it happened early in my walk home. When I stepped outside the office building, it was barely drizzling. Three blocks later I pulled the hood of my coat over my head, as the hat was no longer enough. Then, four blocks further, it was as if angels in the sky above had aimed a bunch of firehoses right at me.

The first mile or so of my walk home is along our waterfront. Not right on it, a block away, so that about half the time there is a building between me and the open air. The deluge hit when I was on a two or three block section where there is nothing but lawn and train tracks sheilding me.

The wind was coming off the water.

Even in the height of summer, the Puget Sound only gets a bit less frigid than ice water. This time of year, the water is maybe a degree above freezing. So any breeze coming off of it is like an arctic blast.

Rain starts out high up in the sky as ice crystals. They warm up as the fall, turning into droplets of ice water. In really warm weather they may get all the way up to cool and refreshing, but this time of year, I suspect that they are only about a billionth of a degree above freezing when they reach a hapless pedestrian on the ground.

So I was being hammered by nearly frozen water. Each droplet sucking heat from me, while the cross-breeze was doing its best to finish the job and turn me into a popsicle.

And there wasn’t really any place for me to go to get out of the rain. What buildings were nearby were mostly office complexes. So I moved as fast as I could.

I decided, once I had reached the halfway mark, when my walking route meets up with a bus line, to take shelter in the bus shelter(!) and wait for a bus.

The thinng that worries me about this, is that this is the second deluge I’ve experienced this year. And December is tradionally a month where we dry out a bit after the heavy rains of November, before the heavy rains of January.

I’m getting a bad feeling about this winter’s weather.

Pineapple Express

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Statistically, the last two weeks of November are the wettest time of year in Seattle. Unlike much of the rest of the year, where it’s just overcast and damp most of the time, with random drizzles or showers here and there, the end of November is all about downpours.

The Pineapple Express is a nickname for a meteorologic phenomenon responsible for many of those heavy rains. Once the upper atmosphere’s streams switch to the winter pattern, it is easy for an atmospheric river to form running from the tropical central pacific right up at northwestern Washington. The result in the city is ponds springing up on sidewalks and streets. Drivers not realizing that they can’t safely follow other cars as closely as they were just a month ago. Cars kicking up roostertails ten feet tall and drenching pedestrians.

Still, I love the rain. Admittedly, I prefer to listen to it pouring down while I’m inside somewhere dry, preferably with a hot beverage. But I also like walking in it, hearing the raindrops drum on the hood of my coat, walking around the deepest puddles (and occassionally letting my inner five-year-old out and stomping to make as big a splash as I can).

I love the way the air smells and feels while the rain is coming down hard–different than the after-rain smell, not better, just different.

I love thinking about where these raindrops have been. Evaporated from the warm ocean surface, carried thousands of miles aloft on the jet stream, and now returning to earth. Where they will soak into the ground, some to be taken up by the grass and and evergreens, others to form creeks that flow into rivers and one day return to the ocean. They may then descend to the deepest trenches of the ocean, eventually encountering a steam vent or a submerged lava flow, which gives them the energy to start ascending toward the surface, again.

So, don’t complain about the rain. Go out there, say hello, and wish it well on this next cycle of it’s incredible journey.

So, what are ya gonna do about it?

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It’s a cliché to say it rains a lot in Seattle. Jokes about long-time residents having gills, or webbed feet, or that we don’t recognize that blinding bright ball that appears in the sky sometimes passed both cliché and passé decades ago.

This year was unusual. We had a drier than usual July. August, which is statistically our driest month anyway, wasn’t merely drier than usual, it was the driest that has ever been recorded. September nearly tied the record for driest September, ever, and for the first 11 days of October, the dry streak had continued. We had experienced just over 13 weeks of extraordinarily dry, warm, sunny weather. It was not as bad a drought as the midwest was experiencing, but it did effect crops throughout the state.

On Friday morning the dry streak ended with a light misting of just over a tenth of an inch of rain (though more was in the forecast, and heavier rain was falling nearby). I was checking my usual collection of news blogs and sources on line, and there, on one of my regular places, a reporter who I know has lived here for more than seven years, was already bitching about the rain.
Continue reading So, what are ya gonna do about it? →

What a difference…

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Mother nature always finds new ways to amaze. Levees are holding in the face to Hurricane Isaac… holding, but the floods are just overtopping them.

Back in 1980, when Mt St Hellens erupted, I lived not far downstream. When the volcano started seriously rumbling, my Great Uncle tried to get my grandparents, Mom, my Aunt Silly, and all us kids to come live with him in California. He had actually started the process of buying a nearby house (he was fairly well off). He was convinced we were all in great danger.

Grandpa pointed out that Uncle Lyle lived in the Shasta Valley… In the shadow of a larger volcano that was part of the same mountain range. Since no one can see the future, we could be trading one natural disaster for a worse one.

It wasn’t until that eruption that I learned Mom, my sister, and I had been living in a flood plain for both the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers for at least four years. Decades before, dikes had been built along the rivers, and as sometimes swampy land dried out, people started building.

For the weeks and months after the eruption, seeing the water level of the Cowlitz sometimes within inches of overtopping the dike certainly made one think.

The difference between inconvenience and disaster is sometimes just a matter of inches or minutes. No matter how many precautions and contingency plans we’ve made, there’s always something that can be worse than we imagined. Or something we didn’t think of. Or simple a bit of bad timing.

Life is a gample. We should be grateful for the wins, learn lessons from the losses, and always be ready to lend a helping hand.

Weather is not climate

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Last week we received an amount of rain slightly greater than the average for the entire month of June.

June in Western Washington is cool and damp. This freaks out a lot of people. Newcomers more than long time residents, but the long timers over react, too. Thanks to the way atmospheric patterns of the pacific change as the northern hemisphere transitions through spring, we always wind up with several weeks in May where the sun comes out and warms us not to summer temps, but certainly warm enough for people to switch to shorts and t-shirts. We get virtually no rain for a few weeks, and people start thinking summer is here.

But the atmosphere is far fromthe summer pattern. As it gets closer to that summer shift, a curious thing happens. High pressure over the Pacific starts pushing cold, but not terribly wet, air at the northwest corner of the continent. Prevailing airflow from the inlands traps that air over a narrow band, and we get several weeks of overcast.

We call it June Gloom.

Now here’s the thing. It happens every year. This is part of our spring. People who complain, including long time residents, are suffering from some kind of amnesia.

The June Gloom is mostly about clouds, not rain. Yeah, it drizzles a bit, usually at night (Cliff Mass’s weather blog has a nice explanation for why most of our June rain happens before dawn), but June is not our wettest month, by any means. So getting an amount of rain equal tothewhole month ofJune inasingle week, well, it’s nothing compared to a week of rain in November.

If we get only typical rain for the rest of the month, we won’t even set a new record.

And remember: official summer in most of the Northern Hemisphere is still ten days away.

While for Seatle, you’ve got a bit over a month.

I love the rain

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I love grey, wet days like today. Why, yes, I am aware that makes me a freak in many eyes.

I don’t care.

The rain is not coming down in buckets. We get that sometimes. Rain coming down so hard that the “rainchill” (cold raindrops hitting you and each absorbing a bit of your body tempature, dozens or scores of large icy cold drops every second) making you shiver and worse. I grew up where 25 degrees below zero Farenheit was neither unheard of nor uncommon, so I know from cold, and I don’t like the rain when it comes down like that.

This morning it was just a nice, gentle shower. Cool, chilly, even, but not cold. And not coming down so hard that I would have been annoyed if I hadn’t had a hood on my coat to pull over my head, but just exactly hard enough that I was glad for the hood.

It was a light enough rain that the sparrows were flitting from tree to tree rather than seek shelter. Crows and gulls shrug off all but the heaviest rain, but sparrows are a bit more delicate. They were out today.

The clouds were not dark, just a soft, cool grey. There was barely any wind.

I love the soft sound the rain makes. I love the steady hissing hum of the tires going by on busy streets. I love the smell of the air. It’s different that the wonderful smell after a rainstorm, but ther are hints of that coming scent in it. I love the sound the occasional larger drops make when they tap my hood or hat. I the way everything turns greener and greener as winter receeds and the spring rains transform our world.

I love the rain.

 

Snow and ice, sun and rain

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While most of the rest of the country was jumping from winter to summer weather, completey bypassing spring, Seattle had a several days of sleet, snow, and ice.

Last week I needed my scarf, stocking cap, and gloves most mornings, but not in the evenings. Friday, particularly, was bad for the walk home. I didn’t need my coat at all, but it was more awkward trying to carry it while walking with the backpack. Saturday and Sunday I was in shorts most of the time. Though by Sunday night I was back to sweat pants and fuzzy socks even for just inside the house.

Seattle weather is weird. 365.25 days a year you need to have sunglasses handy. Eleven months out of the year you need to be prepared for some form of rain. Often it comes as a light drizzle, but deluges are not uncommon.

Used to be that thunder and lightning happened about once a decade. Lately, it’s becoming more common, especially as thundersnow.

I’ve had the habit for years of carrying my scarf and gloves in the bottom of my backpack throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Not because I ever need them in the summer, but because in the fall the transition from warm, almost summer weather to my-fingers-are-frozen takes about a millisecond, and will always happen on a random day.

I took the winter lining out of my leather coat this morning. I didn’t switch to the jacket, yet, because we’re still in the time of the year where heavy deluge-type rain is not unlikely, and the spring jacket isn’t heavy enough for that.

Despite the fact that too much sunny weather makes me cranky (and I am a complete heat wimp) I am looking forward to summer.

Which should arrive around July 12.