Rain

Rain Through the Ages

In the 1500s, the English navigator Sir Francis Drake saw enough of the Northwest coast to give his opinion of the weather: "foul, ... with thick and stinking fogs." Three-hundred years later, the Lewis and Clark expedition expressed a similar opinion. "Eleven days rain and the most disagreeable time I have experienced," William Clark wrote in his journal.

And what about today? According to a joke, with so little sun and so much rain, people in Oregon don't tan - they rust. More seriously, the city of Seattle, Washington has one of the nation's highest suicide rates. Some scientists think a reason may be the rainy weather.

Not all of Washington and Oregon is rainy, however. In fact, many areas get only about 6 inches of rain all year! The Cascade Mountains run through Washington and Oregon. Moist air from the Pacific Ocean loses its moisture, as rain, by the time it passes the Cascades. So there is a "wet side" to the west of the Cascades and a "dry side" to the east.

The Olympic Rain Forest

Rain forests are usually in the tropics, near the equator. The state of Washington is more than 2,000 miles north of the tropics. But, because of the heavy rainfall, Washington, too, has a rain forest. The Olympic Rain Forest, like a tropical forest, is damp and gets very little sunlight. Unlike a tropical forest, it is cool.

Randee Falk: Spotlight on the USA; Oxford University Press, 1993, page 134