Make peace with the deluge

The other day I suggested to my wife that for the rest of the winter we tie a blue tarp over the top of our car.

It's not that old — a 2001 Volkswagen Passat. Last week it flooded. I don't mean it got Northwest clammy, with a mushroom sprouting or two. I mean it was drenched with so much water you could hear waves breaking when you went around a corner. It also flooded in 2003. Apparently tree pollen clogs its drains, causing any liquid landing on the roof to be sluiced through a network of pipes that discharges, perplexingly, onto the interior carpet.

Instead of being flabbergasted at this design flaw, as I was, the Volkswagen dealer just shrugged. He'd dried out six flooded VWs the day before I brought in mine.

Maybe a Volkswagen Passat is not the best choice if you live around trees and rain, I said sarcastically.

"Maybe it isn't," he said, surprisingly. "But I'm not allowed to say that."

When I went to pick up my dried-out car, the dealer had parked it in the lot overnight. Of course it had rained. I opened it and touched the back floor carpet. My hand sunk into water an inch deep.

That's flood number three. And why I started fantasizing about a tarp.

There's no logic to the rain we've been having. It's religious rain. I want to blame VW for my troubles, but the truth is the firmament is soaking us in an end-of-days deluge.

I can hear the old-timers scoffing now. Westneat, you Midwest rube, find some news to write about. Stop the presses: November's wet!

Not this wet it isn't. With almost a foot of rain, it's already our wettest November ever. Just the first two weeks add up to the sixth wettest month in 115 years of record-keeping. If 3-plus inches fall in the next 15 days, it will be the soggiest month of all time, besting the 15.3-inch monsoon that was December 1933.

Since Nov. 1, the heavens have dumped 19 billion gallons on Seattle. That's roughly enough water to fill to the brim 50 Qwest Fields. Or every Volkswagen Passat ever sold.

I called Nick Bond. He's one of those rain worshipers who gets all gloomy when the drizzle finally stops. He's also a climatologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Even he's confounded by all this rain.

"It's been two freak weeks," Bond said. "It's truly remarkable. It's epic. I'm rooting for the record."

So what's going on? Why is it raining so much?

"It's to the point that any reason why is probably unknowable," he said.

That's what I'm talking about: unknowable rain. Rain so drenching and relentless it becomes irrational.

Or you do. It's only mid-November, yet the notion of driving around town under a big blue tarp seems perfectly sane.

Bond says ditch the tarp. He suggests a more elegant solution he's tried himself: Drill holes in the car's floor.

"Let the water in, then let it pass right on through," he counseled.

That's beautiful. He's saying: You may not be able to know this rain. But you can let the rain know you.

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday.

Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.