oh, i see… percentage. forecast. just means a rain sometime, somewhere (alexander in portland)

k. so i know i am still very much a newbie here.  (actually i just realized it is just almost about a year ago that i made the actual decision to come to portland.  it didn’t happen until last march, but as november/08 came, the world persuaded me to depart la for the northwest.)   in any event, the rain stereotype lived on, as i have now told many friends around the world about my moving to portland – rain is always the first question.  from my immediate experience, it was pretty much a myth.  and in the summer, it is entirely true that there is no rain.  but yes, winter was looming and most of the long-time locals warned me it could get bad – more gray than anything.  which sounds just like london.  either way, i don’t care much… i look forward to a dramatic season.  (after all those years in CA, no less).  the funny thing though is the vague weather reports from the internet/local news etc.   as november crept in, the weather forecasts began to more and more look like this:

 

and now that i am truly in it, i realize how to interpret these strange and depressing looking reports.  (i’ve been told over and over not to even look at them, but still, i can not yet come to ignore em).  a day with a rainy icon simply means that there is a chance (maybe 60%) that it will rain at some point, in some area of the city, some certain amount.   so basically, though there is  60% of precipitation, it is even more likely that the cloud may pass over your neighborhood.  or you might be lost in a book store (or god forbid, have a job) and entirely miss the so called rain.  i guess thats why they say shower.  

sitting for the evening in a cafe up the street, after taking some photographs of the fall look around town and dropping yet another resume of at a fabulous health food store, the rain did come. and hard.  a serious downpour.  the kind that made enough noise that everyone in here stopped what they were doing to pay attention to it for a few minutes.  the quick darkness passing over, the water like buckets hitting sidewalks and car tops.  the window view blurs into a painting on the wall.    and quickly, it ends.  it’s like the cloud shakes itself of and moves along out to sea.  just splashing our city clean and fresh.