Northwesterners can take a little rain. But this is getting old. It’s rained in Portland  for the last 11 days, and 18 of 26 days this month. It weighs heavily on Portland’s collective psyche, as I hear every day. More on that in a bit. If you’re reading this from afar, you’re probably thinking: “What. Doesn’t it always rain all the time all year long every minute in all of Oregon and Washington?” No. It doesn’t. Our summers are sweeter than honey on a hot cross bun.  Little rain. Less humidity. Long sunny days and comfortable nights. I’ve lived in New England, the Rockies and the Great Lakes and our Northwest summers beat the pants off yours. So there.  But I digress. The question I keep getting is when will it stop. Along with snarky looks. Demands: “make it stop!” Pleads: “please fix the weather!” (as if… ). All of which, when you boil it down, are really whines. But I’m as guilty as everyone else of that, I’m tired of the rain too!

So what gives, why the soggy spring? Climate Change? Maybe, but I doubt it, and it’s hard to pin natural weather variations of short duration, even though this feels long, really, it’s just a couple months, on global climate change. So let’s not do that. El Nino? Probably a connection there, but usually, coming out of an El Nino winter, we have a warm and dry spring. So there’s something else at work too, most likely. We are transitioning out of El Nino and possibly into a La Nina next winter (good skiing!), but the end of El Nino doesn’t seem to be that unusual as to explain all the rain. Ughh. So wha’ts the reason? Natural variation. Weather happens. Sorry I’m not getting more technical than that, but any explanations about the jet stream and the northern hemisphere weather pattern lead back to WHY is the jet stream doing that?

But here’s the good news: after a very wet month, the weather pattern shifts for the Memorial Day Weekend. The rain ends Thursday night and clouds beging to give way to sunshine Friday. Saturday and Sunday bring more sun and highs around 70-degrees. Yay! I don’t see 80° in our future any time soon, but at least we’ll lose the daily downpours. Those long sunny warm summer days can’t be too far off.

Happy Trails,

Meteorologist

Matt Zaffino