Today is the first day of summer, and I’m not sure what to expect from the weather. Winter rains just keep coming, crimping Father’s Day activities yesterday and making me wonder what will happen now that summer is officially here.
We are living the stereotype for Western Washington weather. You know the jokes:
- It only rains twice a year in Seattle: August through April and May through July.
- What does daylight-saving time mean in Seattle? An extra hour of rain.
- What’s the definition of a Seattle optimist? A guy with a sun visor on his rain hat.
- How to predict weather in Seattle: If you can see Mt Rainier, it’s going to rain. If not, it already is.
- A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it’s raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and asks out of despair, “Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?” The kid says, “How do I know? I’m only 6.”
I’m mostly serious when I tell newcomers that you can expect three months of summer in Western Washington — but not all at once, and don’t try to guess when it will come and go.
There’s the joke about the honest weatherman who says, , “Today’s forecast is bright and sunny with an 80% chance that I’m wrong.”
So, with the hope that we’ll get to see some nice weather this year, here are a few riddles, quotes and facts about rain:
Q: What’s the difference between a horse and
the weather?
A: One is reined up and the other rains down.
Q: What do you call it when it rains chickens and
ducks?
A: Foul (fowl) weather.
Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it. – Mark Twain
Largest rainfall on record: Tropical Cyclone Denise, Jan. 8,
1966, 71.9 inches (6 feet) in 24 hours, La Reunion Island in the
Indian Ocean off the East Coast of Africa. (See Wikipedia
for other rainfall records.) Weather the Weather
Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We’ll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not.
Thanks to Julian T. Rubin for compiling most of these rain-related jokes.
