It Always Rains in Seattle

We have 38 ways to describe the different states of rain. We don’t use umbrellas. We are a region of moss, slugs, puddles, and the endless sound of dripping water. Our skies are gray – there’s an enormous palette of gray tones you might not be aware of unless you live in Seattle. Clouds love us. They love to show off every variety they’re capable of, from fluffy white and wispy, ghostly, pale gray, to the most compact and deepest charcoal this side of black you’ve ever seen.

Our roads are slick, our houses green, our parks are muddy, and watch your step on the sidewalks. We navigate mushy piles of leaves in our rain boots, duck boots, and North Face jackets with the hoods up. We are always damp, we live with SAD, and we never stop talking about the weather. You’d think we hate it here, but you couldn’t be more wrong.

I’m a Seattle native. We’re a rare breed in a city that’s mostly stocked with transplants. I was born here, my mother was born here, and my grandparents found their way here out of the wreckage of the Dust Bowl. I’ve lived other places and I always found my way back. The California hills were too brown, Savannah was too hot, and New York City was too much. And while Savannah gets more rain in a year than Seattle does – no, really, it’s true – no place rains like it rains in Seattle.

Drizzles and downpours, misting rain and slow, fat drops. All-day steady rain, blowing gales of rain, buckets of rain and spitting rain. April showers, sun showers and drenching rain. Fine rain, torrential rain, pelting rain. We are intimate with all of them. But strangely enough, our love affair with rain has nothing to do with the actual rain.

We endure the rain because eventually, days or weeks or even months from now, we’ll get a sunbreak. It might last an hour or a whole glorious day, or spend a week showing us paradise on earth, but we know it’s coming, even on the wettest and gloomiest of days. We’re eating our vegetables in order to get to dessert.

You think that sun lovers live in places like Arizona and Florida, but no one loves the sun more than a true Seattleite. At the slightest hint of a break in the clouds, workplace productivity declines rapidly, sick days are called in, and parks fill with throngs of worshippers. The time of year, the day of the week, and the outdoor temperature do not matter. The only thing that matters is the sun.

We hike, we bask, we bike, we boat. We dust off our Keens and we expose flesh starving for vitamin D. The three-mile path around Green Lake overflows with walkers gleefully shouting, “Wrong way!” at the skaters. On a sunny day the mountain is out. That’s our shorthand for saying that the day is beautiful and Mt. Rainier can be seen in all its glory from nearly every high point in the city. We know that these are the days that make people want to move to our rapidly growing city, but with all the serotonin flooding our brains we don’t care. We save our complaints about newcomers for rainy days.

For all its flaws, social ills, political problems, and growth mismanagement, I love Seattle. I love this city the way I love sunbreaks after the rain. Darkness is always defeated by the light, and there is always light. Seattle is more than topography and geography. It is more than the breathtaking views and vistas that draw hundreds of thousands of tourists in non-pandemic years. It’s the arts and the artists, the music, the coffee, and shared smiles on sunny days. It’s vibrancy, and year round farmers markets, and devotion to our libraries, and our fierce need to do and be better. It’s the way people help each other in times of crisis, and the way we band together to save our landmarks. They say Seattle is dying, but they’ve said that before, and we’re still here. It’s our legacy of resiliency and endurance and unquenchable hope, going right back to the founding of the city in 1851.

The truth is, it doesn’t always rain in Seattle, and we forget it quickly when it’s over. We live with the rain because we know, deep down in our bones, that the sun will always come out again and it’s worth every raindrop.