I can handle the cool but the wet is bumming me out.

I have noticed a declining need to water my enormous lawn in the last few years.

I use hoses and sprinklers so I notice how often and much I have to water.

This year has been the best for NOT having to water.

Bush's fault. Every drop.

This is why I ban people. Their constant off-topic drone gets quite old after a while.

I've also noticed the inverse relationship between our cool weather and the rest of the country's heat. It works in reverse as well: when we're simmering, the rest of the country seems cool and CNN runs stories on the "lost summer".

According to the O, this is the 2nd longest we've ever had to wait for a 90-degree day since weather tracking began. The longest was August 8th, I think. Looking at the long-term forecast, that record is beatable.

I've thought since spring that this was going to be a cool, wet summer. Not happy to be proved right.

I have to say, one of the better moves made this year was the inexpensive purchase of a black plastic "upside-down" planter at Tuesday Morning. The plastic retains a little too much heat for the basil, but the tomato plants seem to really like it. I'd considered bunching them completely, but not only are we getting some tomatoes - the slugs haven't found them yet! That was maybe $10 bucks and a bag of sand for ballast.

"This year has been the best for NOT having to water."

I bet Randy Leonard hates this weather. Every dismal, cloudy day probably has folks at the water bureau scrambling, knowing the funds for heir next pet project will come up short. Sigh.

Yeah blame our weather on those darn people from the wrong side of the Rockies. All that hot air in DC isn't helping much either.

With all this macro climate dampening our spirits, thank goodness for micro brew.

I am hoping that we have a hot dry end of August. Dove Season starts September 1st, and if it rains here the week before all the doves fly south. Was that way for the last two years. Not worth getting a hunting license if that happens.

John Benton...Please take Sam and Randy dove hunting with you. If they trip and fall the dogs can retrieve them...or not.

Last year was pretty cool, too. (Aside for those 3 or 4 days that the family had to share the one room with a window air conditioner playing it's own game of The Little Engine That Could).
What I really remember, though, was that it was so cool early in the summer that I couldn't grow a single decent tomato.

Portland Native...fortunately I am a better shot then Dick Cheney.

This weather will make you question your heroes. Take the Beatles:

"I can show you that when it starts to rain,
Everything's the same.
I can show you, I can show you.
Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.
Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines,
It's just a state of mind?
Can you hear me, can you hear me?"

No, guys. I can't hear you. I love the song, but rain is not the same as a sunny day. One key difference? Billions of drops of water falling from the sky.

Oh, and it's not a state of mind either. Nobody ever said, "I feel depressed. I better take an umbrella today."

Well, look at it this way, at least your water bills will be lower! Oh, no, wait...

Well it's cloudy in the morning gonna be raining in the afternoon
Cloudy in the morning and it's gonna be raining in the afternoon
If you don't like this rainy weather you better pack your bags and move
But if you're running from it brother the only road that I can see
If you're running from it brother the only road that I can see
Is the road that leads to nowhere and nowhere is a fool like me
Rain keep a falling falling round my window pane
Rain keep a falling falling round my window pane
Ain't never seen so much rainy weather guess I'll never see the sun again

Tom McCall welcome sign fades in the rear view mirror.

Don't worry about the water bureau. They'll find a way to squeeze more money out of you.

This time, it'll probably be cuz you're using too little water and it's cutting into their revenue forecast. They need more money to...well, fill in Randy's latest pet project.

In a normal summer, Randy would be declaring a water shortage about now, which would mean...yup, gotta raise your rates.

It was 1983 Jack. I remember it well. I was in law school, my friend was taking the Bar. It rained the entire summer.

Just drove back from Bend, it's the same over there. Rained for 3 days...

(Jack, grabbed a sandwich at Planker's today and it was great)

For those that are interested, there's a good explanation of what's happening on Mark Nelson's weather blog over at kptv.com. That site gets a ton of traffic anytime there's even an outside chance of a "Snowpocalyse" and is pretty fun to follow.

JF, you beat me to it. The post for Sunday or Monday has a great map that shoes how the West Coast is predominantly cooler than normal, with bright reds showing the heat in the Midwest and mostly the east side of the Rockies. In time the high pressure over the east side should retro west, the lows move out of our area, and we would get the off-shore winds that bring our temps up. Maybe . . . meanwhile, over in Boise, and even Ontario, they're having a fairly normal summer with a lot of high temps in the 90s.

Fall's finally here. It's been a long spring.

How I envy you lot. You can't go to a grocery store in Texas without at least one old lady honking "It's HOT" in your face, as if we should have three feet of dry ice snow on the ground in July. I now stay away from the grocery store on weekends, because they gang up on you: sometimes the flocks of biddies are so thick and so boisterous that they look and sound like pterosaur rookeries. (And the real joy is that, to an individual, they're all local-born. You'd think that they'd understand that Dallas summers are hot by the time they turned ten.)

The wet, cold summers in Western Oregon are God's way of keeping this area from becoming as crowded and artificial as Southern California.

Dismal....
Jack,
Would you entertain a summer cyber party to liven things up? Did enjoy that holiday one you hosted.

...at least your water bills will be lower

Lower, but not proportinate to actual water usage. Most of our Portland "water bill" is for sewer cost, which is based on previous winter usage - the theory being that in winter, most of the water consumed goes down the drain, unlike summer, when it goes on the lawn and misses the sanitary sewer system.

Sorry to say it was sunny and 85 here in the Reno area today. Slightly warmer and sunny through the week.

We might still have a hot and sunny August. We can hope.

June 1983 rained every day.

Hot and sunny (and not humid) last week on the Jersey Shore. Manasquan was lovely. Except for the salps.

The only year since 1980 that we hadn't hit 90 by July 19th was 1993 - didn't hit 90 until Aug. 2 that year.

I was talking to my dad this morning lamenting the weather, and he said the only year he remember being this bad was "one of our first years up here" (as visitors, I lived in Vegas until 2007 but visited with the family growing up)... he guessed early 80s. Glad to know his memory's up to snuff after all, based on all those comments about 83.

Global Warming will be here any day.

When I moved to the States for good, I got off the plane from Arabia and Portland was overcast for one month. The feeling I had was that you couldn't go outside. There was no outside. Just a big gray room.

Here in Houston we have not seen the south side of 90 during the day since May, and the coldest it has gotten at night has been 74. This week we finally got some rain, we are over 12 inches below normal for the year. I finally realized that I'm use to it when I came in the house and had been thinking that it wasn't that bad outside, looked at the outside thermometer and saw it was 92. So we have our heat in the summer but we don't freeze in the winter AND there are jobs here and the cost of living is about 60% of what it was when I lived in the Portland area. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.

Oh, Bojack, how I envy you. I said after last summer's record-breaking heat that if this year was the same, I'm leaving St. Louis and heading back to Portland. And this year is worse. I was on my way home the other day at 11 p.m. and the heat index was still 102.

Guess I'd better start looking for a job in Portland again!