70 percent of the surface of our planet is covered by water---including Budweiser, Gatorade and drool.

Land and poor math students cover the other 45 percent.

After our unusually sunny summer, the return of Seattle rain is getting mixed reviews.

It hasn’t gotten quite torrential yet---and there’s no need to build an ark---but the autumnal weather has arrived. To some longtime dwellers, it’s like a reunion with an old friend---a soggy old friend who drenches us in reassuring familiarity.

But for other local folks, the return of the rain is akin to the re-arrival of an obnoxious relative---Uncle Earl, who sloshes through your front door unannounced and planning to stick around until at least next May.
An acquaintance from the Midwest once said to me, “No wonder you Seattle people have cornered so much of the market on coffee, craft brews and wine. You’ve got so much water to work with.” Based on that reasoning, we should also be the world leader in all other things liquid: water parks, picks, melons and nymphs---not to mention artificial tears, humidifiers and spittoons.

Old-timers will say the rain brings us all the good things we treasure around here. My mom used to put it this way: “The rain brings us all the good things we treasure around here.”

I think she was referring to the trees, grass and gardens---not the mud, rot and mold.

Although I guess the mold is a good thing if you ever find yourself in need of penicillin. I once did---and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell my mom.

Some local people bristle at the popular belief that Seattle gets a lot of rain. Maybe that’s true when measured vertically, but horizontally we’re pretty much the same as any other place.

So sure, mushrooms, frogs and ducks love it here, but this area isn’t rainier than Portland---the one you may be familiar with in Oregon. The City of Mildewy Roses averages 43 inches a year---43.08 in a leap year.
By comparison, Seattle is bone-dry with a measly 38 inches. That’s little more than mere dew---hardly worthy of anything more than a Value Village umbrella.

So-called sunshine places like New Orleans and Miami get twice the rain Seattle does. On the other hand, Seattle has twice the NFL team.

But it is true that in the contiguous (a word meaning “stuck together”) United States, the Northwest is the dish-soap hands-down leader. In fact, 12 of the rainiest spots in the country are in Washington and Oregon---with our state having most of them.

They include Aberdeen, Naselle, Humptulips, Baring and Forks. (By the way, Baring and Forks just missed out on being the funniest words in the preceding sentence because of Humptulips.)

Some forecasters are saying that we are headed into an El Nino (the Nino) this fall and winter. That could mean warm and dry weather. Who knows what that means? Warm like above 32 degrees? Dry like a martini? Whichever, it probably means that neither water skiers nor snow skiers are going to be happy.

Rain is one thing. But while on a vacation recently with my wife and our two Springer spaniels, we encountered a hailstorm so violent our frightened dogs both cowered under a table. It got crowded under there with the three of us---and it took my wife quite a while to coax us out.

Hail is like rain in bullet form. I know a guy who’s truck was ruined by a hailstorm. It dented the car body so thoroughly; it looked like the dimpled surface of a golf ball.

Coincidentally, some hailstones are the size of golf balls. Few are the size of trucks.

So batten down the hatches! The rain---and sometimes hail---is back. If you don’t have hatches, better get some. I got mine at Hatches World. If they don’t have the one you want, they’ll give you a rain check.

You can reach Pat Cashman at pat@patcashman.com