ONCE UPON A time, anthropologists somehow determined that the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow.
Fishing guides and loggers have at least that many words for rain, but many of them cannot be printed in a family newspaper. But I’ll try. All in an effort to explain the many new and descriptive terms for inclement atmospheric conditions pandered by the weather man to get us to buy an umbrella.
Thinking up new names for rain is how the weather people make the big bucks.
Currently, we are being warned of an estimated class 5 atmospheric river that stretches all the way across the Pacific Ocean from somewhere near the Philippines to the wet end of the Olympic Peninsula, which the weather man has labeled “the Mango Express.”
This is different from the Pineapple Express that visits us from Hawaii, but I do not know how.
Either one of these atmospheric anomalies could qualify as a gully-washer.
A rainy day can start out softly with a gentle spritzer you hardly notice. We call that an intermittent drizzle.
As the day progresses, the precipitation sometimes increases to a more noticeable form of falling moisture we call a penetrating drizzle.
As the clouds grow darker and the raindrops get larger, they are often accompanied by a gentle breeze that can increase until the rain is falling sideways. Sideways rain can make breathing difficult.
Sometimes it is raining so hard it becomes impossible to work.
Luckily, we can usually go fishing in weather that is too wet to work in. Unless the rivers are flooding.
That is when we start plunking, which is a desperate form of fishing where you throw a big ball of bait in the river and sit in the truck and watch the logs float by.
That’s when my tourist friends are likely to ask the craziest questions like, “Does it ever stop raining here?”
Sometimes it’s easy for a tourist to think it’s raining. When what we are, in fact, experiencing is a blinding drizzle. There’s a fine line between drizzle and a light shower that can be difficult to determine.
Sometimes you’ll need a professional to tell the difference to properly interpret the weather report.
It has been raining so much lately, the old timers have been wondering if it is time to start building a really big boat in the back yard. Don’t bother.
In the beginning, God sent a Pineapple Express that lasted 40 days and 40 nights that drowned anything outside of Noah’s Ark. After the water receded from the record flood levels, God set a rainbow in the sky as a promise he wouldn’t drown the earth no matter how much measurable precipitation was recorded.
Since then, periodic rainfall events have been a mixed blessing.
It is the story of a seasonally adjusted jet stream pushing warm moisture-laden air up and over the icy mass of the Olympic Mountains, with a resulting release of atmospheric moisture. Significant moisture accumulations flow down slope to form rivers.
Without rivers, there would be no fish, and if I couldn’t fish, I’d have very little to write about.
It is indeed fortunate that even though we may experience the chance of isolated showers that may be heavy at times, with a likely chance of afternoon thundershowers in some regions of the forecast area, we can rest assured that, inevitably, the rain will stop and the sun will shine.
It all depends on how you interpret the weather report. It is hoped that, by using appropriate atmospheric terminology, people will understand that being wet is cool.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
