Here's an article from my favorite
R-G columnist,
Bob Welch:
Rainy rep undeserved, but we'll take itBy Bob Welch
Columnist, The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, September 30, 2007Early Friday, about 2:30 a.m., I awoke and heard it, but my life had become too un-Oregonized to recognize it at first. Rain on the roof.
In November or January, waking to rain as an Oregonian is like waking to roosters as a farmer - so much a part of your routine that, over time, you hardly notice the sound. But the reality is that once the cloud faucets turn off in the spring we go into a seven-month stretch - with a few drizzly days of exception - and find ourselves un-Oregonized.
We forget who we are - The Rain State. Land of Ten Zillion Drips.
We wake to seemingly day after day of blue skies. (In July, August and September, fewer than a third of our days are considered "cloudy.")We enjoy desktop-photo weather that the rest of the nation doesn't realize we're enjoying. But here's the truth: We're really a part-time rain state with a full-time rain "rep." It's the perfect combination for slow-growthers like me who, if not Tom McCall "visit-but-don't-stay" types, aren't interested in becoming SoCal North.
Seventy-two percent of the rain in Eugene comes in a five-month stretch - November through March - that represents only 42 percent of the year.
"October can often be marginal, but, yes, those months are going to give us roughly three-fourths of our rain," says George Taylor, the Oregon State University climatologist. "Our annual precipitation is about the same as Washington, D.C., and New York, but their rain is spread out through the year and ours is skewed to the cool season." Until Friday, 81 of the previous 90 days had come and gone without any measurable rain. And 14 of the past 15 months in Eugene have been below average in rainfall. But the stereotypes of outsiders, thank goodness, die hard. Thus, I imagine people watching ESPN's "GameDay" program from Eugene - some of it recorded Friday during rain showers - and probably thinking: Typical Oregon.
I love it, even if it is a lie.
A typical Sept. 28 in Eugene is rain-free. Since 1983, it's rained on that date only three times. In fact, any September day is typically rain-free. Our mean September rainfall is 1.54 inches of rain, far less than the Septembers of such cities as Dallas, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Oklahoma City; Atlanta; Boston; Indianapolis; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; and Miami.
And yet people in those places think of Oregon and think of the smell of wet flannel. (Yes, yes, and we men shave our beards with axes!)
Never mind that while I was speaking in Oklahoma City once, the rain was coming down so hard that drips were falling on the podium, courtesy of a leaking roof.
Nobody will ever think of Oklahoma as the rain state; and Oregon will, thankfully, always be thought of as exactly that. You get introduced to give a talk in some relatively dry state - "our speaker tonight is from Oregon ..." - and the audience expects Noah with a lapel mike and a few rain jokes.
I happily oblige. "Whataya call two days of rain in Oregon?" I ask. "A weekend."
They laugh. Inside, I laugh. But with the nation's eyes on Eugene Saturday, I was worried. Worried that our wonderful summer-fall weather would continue through the weekend, leaving millions of California-Oregon TV viewers Googling "Mayflower" or "United Van Lines."
Fortunately, we were saved by an early shift toward Phase II of our climatological year; Friday's thunder and hail was a particularly nice touch.
"We're a bimodal state," Taylor says, "but we get a fairly rapid transition. Once things start going, we fall off the table pretty fast." Meaning those "cool season" rains, if not already here, are coming soon to a gutter near you. And, once again, we'll become Oregonized, true children of the rain.
For us, temporarily. But in the minds of outsiders, 365 days a year.
