SIENA JEAKLE ’15
The days have been growing colder, darker and rainier. A constant fog is overtaking our city, each day sinks deeper into a perpetual grayness that will cling to our world until spring. I love it.
There’s something about these gray days that boosts my spirits. This seems strange, since this Autumn weather is generally accepted as the definition of dreary, but I know I’m not alone in this feeling. I’d say that most of us from the Pacific Northwest can appreciate this overcast beauty. The clouds create a crisp, gray backdrop behind the world, lighting it up like a stage.
The world is open and full of opportunity, and we are deliciously free of the expectations that come with sunny days. In the summer, there’s always the pressure to make the most out of the pretty weather, and plans feel predetermined. As the sun rises, so do expectations, and it feels like a waste just to hang out. In the fall, however, the weather is chilly and life is chill. The default activity is to hang out and stay warm, so doing anything is an overachievement!
Opportunity is everywhere, and I want to get out and do things. Fall is the time for movies, plays, coffee shops galore. Fall is conversation, reading, writing, baking, puddle-jumping, leaf-stomping, pumpkin-patching, sweater-wearing. Life is slow and food is warm, and I want to take advantage of it all.
In addition to the feeling of opportunity, the stormy atmosphere makes every day a challenge, so we are granted the ability to overcome. Just getting through the day is a win. One of the most magnificent feelings in the world is the relief that accompanies climbing into a warm, dry car and nesting into the darkness and security of a passenger’s seat as the rain drills down upon the world. How blessed are we north-westerners that this triumph is so accessible! We are so frequently awarded with that familiar rush of slamming the car door shut–hair wet, hands freezing–and enclosing ourselves into a safe little pod that’s impenetrable to the pluvial pandemonium outside. Maybe it’s the exhilaration of dominating nature that makes this such a joyous event, smirking at Mother Nature’s futile attempts to break through our windshield forcefield. Maybe it’s simply schadenfreude and we get satisfaction out of being comfortable when we know others are getting soaked. Maybe it’s just nice to feel dry. No matter what, we’re lucky to have it all the time.
These dreary and blustery mornings may discourage most of the population, but not us Seattleites. I have many times tried to explain the delight of a dreary day to my Utan mother and my Alabaman father, but they can’t wrap their heads around it. Both of them native to climates that pinball between suffocatingly hot summers and trapped-inside-because-the-door’s-frozen-shut winters, they believe the greatest beauty of Seattle is its bright, clear, sunny days. However, those of us with the northwest in our bones have a special power to recognize the magic of gray and rainy days. It’s like x-ray vision except that instead of seeing through things, we can’t see anything because it’s foggy and we feel okay about that.
In fact, Seattle is secretly not incredibly rainy. We just tell people that so they won’t come here and crowd the place too much. It rains a lot, but not heavily and with a notable absence of thunder and lightning. The real marker of Seattle weather is our utter lack of sun. While we annually get about 150 rainy days, (ranking behind cities like Chicago, Miami, Dallas, and even Tacoma), we have on average 226 cloudy days per year. This puts us in the top 5 cloudiest cities in the nation, all of which are in Washington.
Seattle was built for gray, drizzly days. Yes, it has waterproof infrastructure, but moreover the city seems like it was chemically engineered to light up when it meets the morning fog. The overcast perfectly complements the glass colosseums downtown, the brick walls of little coffee shops, the checkerboard of freight trains, the huge, majestic cranes in their regal line. Our so-called nasty weather is the essence of the clean, industrial wonderland we call our home.
I am a proud north-westerner and I love the rain. It’s finally time for fall, time for the cutest clothes, good food, warm drinks, and holidays. No matter how many times people use “sunny” as a synonym for happy, I will always hold that these gray days are the best of all. I’ll take the rain, I’ll take the fog, I’ll even take the drear. I’m proud to say I thrive on it, and I’m ecstatic that it’s that it’s finally time for rain again. So get out of here, Sun. It’s time for you to chill out and let the cloudy skies have a turn.
