Rain; Breezy

"DRENCHED," proclaimed this morning's paper in bold letters scrawled across the green section of a rainbow colored United States map. Not warm, not humid, not even those nice little slanted lines representing "showers," but DRENCHED was the adjective of choice to describe this moist, green region of the country we now call home. One of the things I've found most interesting about living in this quirky, eccentric city is the relationship Portlanders have to the rain. When we arrived this summer to weeks of bright blue skies, low humidity, and 70 degree temperatures, we thought we had landed in weather heaven. "Oh, but you just wait," they would say. In coffee shop lines, at the grocery store, walking along neighborhood sidewalks, Portlanders personified the rain as though it were a great sea monster about to rise out of the deep. It was as though the rain were omnipresent and would come, yes, it would come. And then....the rains came and time after time I have heard, "Wow, it sure is raining outside. Did it do this last year? Doesn't it seem a bit early this year? Can you believe it is raining? Oh, it is just miserable outside." Wait.... I thought this was the big thing we've all been waiting for, the thing that Pacific Northwesterners pride themselves upon, the thing that was about to descend upon us all, driving us into the coffee shops and pubs? So why is everyone so surprised and so mildly irritated?
And then I began to wonder who the poor guy was at the Oregonian (Portland's paper) who had the laborious job of writing up the weather each week. How long can one's creative juices last? Here are some of his valient attempts at giving creative expression to this week's weather report:

"rain; breezy"

"a little rain"
"rain possible"
"a couple of showers"

"cloudy; some rain"

"a touch of rain"

More to come. From what I hear...it has just begun.