Humor

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I live in the Northwest, Oregon in particular.

We get a lot of rain in Oregon.

We have some good-sized mountain ranges that the clouds can’t bother to get over, so they have to lighten their load by dropping lots of rain first so they can get over the tall mountain tops. Clouds are lazy things, really. Sure, they carry rain around all the time, but they don’t show much initiative, get blown about by whatever winds that may come along, and if there really isn’t much air pressure, they just hang around or spin in circles.

This accounts for the frequency of rain in Oregon. Clouds stumble in from their trip from the coast, and simply aren’t motivated to go anywhere, so they hang around Oregon and unload their rain. Often they give up trying to even get over the mountians, so they dump some rain for a while and head back out over the ocean again. Ho hum.

Now, many of you probably already have the wrong idea. While it may rain all day in Oregon, it is quite common not to have great amounts of measurable precipitation. Oregon has a special name for rain: drizzle. It's like the clouds have some tiny leak or perforation and they just dribble out the stuff and end up making everything damp.

This I also attribute to the laziness of clouds. Not like those Midwest clouds that go sweeping across the plains -- and when they decide to let loose with a good rainfall, you know it, brother. It rains. Or in the Southwest where you can get flash flooding with some really ambitious clouds. We don’t get any of that kind of ambition here in Oregon.

Everywhere else flooding is an event. Flooding is never an “Event” here in Oregon. A windstorm that blows down trees is an “event”; a snowstorm that suddenly piles up snow banks overnight is an “event”. Here in Oregon flooding is a “Project”. A very, very long project.

It takes a lot of weeks and months for all the drizzle to saturate the ground so it starts to add up to something that can be called “eventful”. It takes a lot of weeks and months of continuous rain for Oregonians to notice something out of the ordinary, too.

Here’s a conversation between two Oregonians, under umbrellas, after four months of continuous rainfall:
“Have you noticed something unusual lately?”
“Yeah, now that you mentioned it, but I can’t seem to put my finger on it.”
“Me too.”
“Did we turn our clocks back?”
“Maybe that was it.”
“Yeah! That really threw me for a loop.
“Well, see you later.”
“Later.” (slosh, slosh, slosh)

Oregon meteorologists get real cagey once we’ve logged many weeks of continuous rain. No one wants to be the first one to say the “Flood” word. They’ll dance around it, making ambiguous hints that we’re into “Record Rainfall” since the time of Noah, or if you see houses moving apparently on their own accord it MIGHT have something to do with the wet we’ve been experiencing.

Making “Rain” sound like a news event in the Northwest is like announcing that there’s CORN in the Midwest. If you’re not careful you can end up sounding silly and loose all credibility and then comes the kiss of death -- sound like an “Outsider” not familiar with Oregon weather.

Oregonian 1: Weather reporter said we might be in for some flooding.
Oregonian 2: What, did a dam break?
Oregonian 1: No, just because of the rain.
Oregonian 2: Huh, must be a new guy. Only been around for twenty years or so.
Oregonian 1: Yeah. I’ll listen to someone else from now on…
Oregonian 2: Probably best.

Not to say Oregon doesn’t get summer or winter conditions. The rain gets warmer in the summer and colder in the winter. Oregon gets a great variety of rain in the winter. Sometimes it will get slushy when it falls and will be called “rain”. Sometimes it will get frozen into hard particles and then it will be called “rain”.

Sometimes it will crystallize into fluffy flakes, no two of which are alike, which fall gently from the sky, which is of course called “rain”. You see, the clouds here in Oregon are too lazy to make anything so imaginative as sleet, hail or snow.

And our meteorologists don’t want to sound like “Outsiders” either, so when temperatures get to freezing, they always predict “rain”, even though it might somehow turn out to be something else. Meteorologists have a difficult time uttering the “Snow” word, too. Now you know why a snowstorm is an “event” here in Oregon.

In the summer, the clouds turn from their traditional white into some shades of blue, and the rain turns much warmer and a great deal less wet, too. Most prevalent, though, is a small round yellowish cloud that lazily moves across the sky every day while the rain it gives off is nice and warm, sometimes hot, and on occasion can turn your skin a different color—what? What? What’s that?
Oh.
Well, maybe its best if we don’t tell them.
Why spoil a good thing if they’re used to it?

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