A flood warning was issued for the Willamette Valley. It's a slow steady rain, a soaking rain, the kind that drenches the ground and creeps up the walls of the house and up the bases of trees until everything is saturated. It's like bitterness, it slowly fills every empty place.

The pineapple express came breezing into town last night, a wet storm rising from the South. In the dusk when we were walking from the grocery store to the car S asked what was wrong because I was squinting, my face all pinched against the stinging droplets of rain that the swirling wind blew against my face. I pointed up at the clouds and told him, "Nothing." But it may be something. I've felt like something grey slowly approaches.

The temperature has held steady since last night, right around fifty degrees. Warm rain melts the snow, and there is a lot of snow in the mountains. It melts blue and rushes in a cascading torrent down the rivers and rills, providing the name for the mountains.

The Willamette Valley lies between the Coast Range mountains and the Cascades, and the Willamette River rolls north from its mountain tributaries. As it travels north it is joined by hundreds of rivers and creeks the length of the valley, until it reaches Portland, where it runs into the massive Columbia River and heads to the Pacific.

Some years the river jumps its big banks, a muddy and dangerous occurrence. I hope this is not the year when all the little river towns long the valley watch the water rise with dread. I hope the rain stops soon.