Mama & Me from PDX: Rain, rain everywhere? Not every day, but there have been some mighty interesting ones that I've lived through as if I were a native!

According to the National Weather Service at 5:02 a.m. PDT on March 25, a slow-moving cold front brought heavy rain to the area on Saturday March 24, during the day and the night. Some coastal areas in northern Oregon and southern Washington got nearly 3 inches. In Portland from midnight to midnight, a record was set with 0.88 inch (breaking the 0.83 inch record set in 1948--the year before I was born). At the National Weather Service office out to the east of the airport and just south of the Columbia River, 1.29 inches fell.

From what we could see out our windows, a little over 12 miles south and west of the airport, I'm leaning toward us getting over an inch in Northwest Portland. At 5:30 a.m. Saturday, I awoke to the sound of rain hitting the windows, an infrequent occurrence in my short-lived experience here. It rained off and on all day. Then, as predicted, the real rain started in the evening. It never slowed down, and when I woke up at 2:15 a.m., I walked over to the living room windows to look at the streetlight. Yep, it was still raining just as hard and swift. Satisfied, I crawled back into bed and fell fast asleep, dreaming of the beautiful flowers and blue skies to come. When I woke up at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, it had slacked off to practically nothing. By the afternoon, the sun was out amid scattered clouds.

What I cannot fathom about the heavy rain here is this, and I'm wondering if some part of physics or some such science could explain it. When the rain is falling so swift and close together that, in the glow of the early morning streetlights, it resembles nothing better than a showerhead full on, why can I not see that multitude of drops when I look straight out our 4th floor windows or down at the street? I'm not kidding; it's like sheets of water, and I cannot see it! But if I look at the streetlight out the bathroom window or the one out the living room window, I can see a downpour--even without having my glasses on! Is it a perspective thing, because I'm up in the rain on the 4th floor, instead of at street level looking up at it? If I stand transfixed at the living room window and allow my eyes to notice only motion, with my glasses on, I can sometimes see it raining if the drops are large enough. Sometimes during the day, if I look at the wet street long enough, I can see the raindrops causing a continuous glittering, a motion caused by the changes in light as the drops hit the rain-blackened pavement.

If I hadn't learned the trick of looking at the streetlights, many a morning I would've walked right out into the rain and quickly looked like a wet fool! It's got to the point that I use my raincoat as my outer layer all the time, not that I expect to get in that sort of drenching rain--they don't come along that often. It's just that it's so easy to put up the hood and keep right on waiting for the bus or walking to the Fred Meyer or Zupan's or to the bank or the Burger King for my morning senior Coca Cola. The mornings that I saw the downpour in the streetlight, I also put on my shiny black rubber boots. I never take an umbrella with me, on good advice from Lamont and Leland.

Here's what Dave Salesky, meteorologist at KGW-TV, had to say in a Weather Blog post from 11/30/06: As Officer Joe Friday would say "Just the Facts Ma'am." So here they are... It was the wettest November ever in Portland 11.77" of rain 6.36" above normal, smashing a record that stood for over 60 years. On the coast some places like Astoria saw over 20" of rain. The Rose City had 3 days with an inch or more of precipitation, the heaviest amount 2.53" on the 6th. On the 6th we also saw our warmest temperature 68 degrees. We had only two count'em two dry days this month the 16th and 17th.

I remember November 6 in Portland, The Rose City. It was a Monday. I stood at the bus stop after work, waiting patiently for my first bus, with water running down my sleeves and dripping off my finger tips. I couldn't believe I was calmly standing there, like I'd been doing it all my life, wearing my inexpensive rain-resistant windbreaker with a hood. It barely covered my torso; my legs were soaking wet in the few minutes before the bus arrived. If I'd been in Mississippi without an umbrella, I would've been running for the car or the front door of home or work or the grocery store. Or I'd be precariously balancing an umbrella and a bag of papers to grade and a purse and a bag or two of groceries, hoping that the umbrella wouldn't get blown inside out or draw the attention of a bolt of lightning. Y'all Mississippians know what I mean.

By Wednesday, November 8, I'd gone to Target and bought my knee-high rubber books and to REI where I found my green Helly Hansen raincoat with the hood. It's rain repellant, fabulously so. I'm ready now, as you can see. I called myself Weather Ready Woman on the Dec. 14, 2006, post where this picture first appeared.

On particularly windy days, I wore the two raincoats. My almost-knee-length black one has no hood; my near-bootay-length green one has a hood. My goal was to keep myself as dry as possible, hence I wore the green one on top of the black one and my rubber boots. When my dear brother heard that, he said I must look like a bag lady. My answer was, no, I looked like I knew how to stay dry! And my inexpensive windbreaker has been relegated to emergency duty only, stashed in the car for those infrequent times when I drive somewhere and it starts to rain.

For me, dealing with the rain in Portland has been a freeing experience of bounteous proportion. I exult in it. Beguiled, I look at it out the windows. Curious, I walk in it. Now and then, it blows in my face. Beneath my hood, I wear my red Dale Earnhardt Jr. cap or a green and white flowered Race Girl cap or a visor that looks like the black and white checkered flag at the end of the race. Then the hood cannot slide down over my glasses, obscuring my view; if the wind whips at my hood, I merely tighten it using the those little sliding plastic things on the elastic cords. I walk through torrents running downhill on sidewalks and leaf-clogged watery intersections, knowing my boots will keep my feet dry.

I feel like a kid again. It's a joy that I wonder about--as the years pass and I grow more used to the rain in the Pacific Northwest, will I lose the joy?

I realize by now that some of y'all are thinking, "Whew! The girl needs to get a life!" Truth be told, I've got one, and I love it!

Here are pictures I took from our 4th floor kitchen window the evening of March 24. I pushed the window all the way up, took my seat backwards on a kitchen table chair, stabilized my zoom lens on top of the chair back, and took these photos. I love 'em.

(To give you some perspective on the following pictures, this first one is the apartment building diagonally across the intersection from our building, and the street light at the corner in between. It's the only one that I took on March 25 when the rain had stopped.)

Here's the apartment building the evening of March 24. You'll have to click on it to get a good view of the rain in the streetlight. Can you see the man at his computer in the upper left?