Seattle-specific seasons and the different types of rain

There are some places where rain is rain and the number of seasons is known.

But Western Washington isn’t one of them.

The Seattle area has so many different kinds of precipitation — drizzle, mist, showers, virga — that residents have taken to making up their names for it. “Is liquid sunshine” even used anywhere else? And it has, too, an apparently unknowable number of seasons.

In a 2009 essay, Washington native Jenni Whalen laid out Seattle’s six types of rain: drizzle, mist, sprinkles, “normal rain,” downpours and thunderstorms.

Whalen described the drizzle as a slow and steady rain that can last for days but “doesn’t ruin your hair, or your outfit, or your day. It just sticks around, annoying and unassuming. And so you adapt because it’s just a drizzle.”

Seattle-born comedian Derek