As my car rolls into Astoria late one winter afternoon, I find myself squinting in surprise. Puffy white clouds float regally above the Columbia River, here more than four miles wide. Patches of blue sky appear coquettishly, then vanish.

And yes, that painfully bright object is the sun, its long rays stretching through the framework of the bridge connecting Oregon on the south side of the river to Washington on the north. As William Clark wrote in his journal when, in 1805, he finally reached the Columbia’s mouth: “O! The joy!”

In this small city tucked into Oregon’s northwest corner, my burst of winter sunlight is a welcome anomaly. On average, 80 inches of rain cascade down Astoria’s steep streets every year, more than double the rainfall 1½ hours southeast in Portland.

Things have always seemed twice as tough here; the town that once billed itself as “The Future New York of the Pacific” has struggled over the years to live up to that bombastic promise. When the hardscrabble profits from fish and timber faded half a century ago, Astoria shrank from about 25,000 inhabitants to fewer than 10,000, leaving a town cluttered with empty canneries and warehouses.

The town now trades on its nostalgic charm. Stately public buildings and opulent Victorian homes — many transformed into spotless bed-and-breakfasts — terrace the north-facing hillside above the waterfront. Coffeeshops, bookstores, and art galleries line the downtown streets; eateries range from seafood shacks to white-linen restaurants.

Cruise ships make regular stops here, depositing tourists who ride the waterfront trolley, wander through the town’s museums, and climb the steep streets for killer views of the Columbia River. When the clouds part and half-rainbows slide into the water, it’s clear that the curtain is going up on Astoria, Act Two.

“Even in the winter, we’re always busy,” said Pam Armstrong, who, along with her husband, David Armstrong, owns and operates the Rose River Inn, a Victorian bed and breakfast.

The windstorm that struck the Oregon coast in early December marked the only weekend their guests couldn’t make it since the Armstrongs bought the inn three years ago.

“It felt like an earthquake every time a gust of wind shook the house,” Pam Armstrong recalled. “When we walked around the next day, it almost looked like a ghost town; so many big windows and storefronts had been damaged downtown. But everybody’s really pitched in and helped clean up.”

By late December, the only obvious sign of the storm’s destruction was the occasional tree, torn out by its roots, lying forlornly along area roads.

Even a freak storm can’t rattle Astoria, a quiet town that knows how to endure. Sure, there’s buckets of frothy surf just a 15-minute drive away, where the land ends and the Pacific begins. But Astoria’s waterfront is the placid Columbia River, where strong currents run silently out of sight.

At the Rosebriar Hotel, my bed and breakfast for the weekend, a few middle-aged friends have stopped in for a night, while a newlywed couple has claimed the third-floor Captain’s Suite.

A former convent just up the hill from downtown, the building was renovated in the early 1990s; today it offers omelettes and a gas fire in the living room in addition to postcard views of the river. Next door sits a house just as grand, although its flaking white paint and aggressive blackberry canes reveal that the new Astoria has yet to claim this property.

“Oh, that belongs to the Flavels,” says one of the Rosebriar’s proprietors, Cliff Lachman.

In any other town, this would be the Ghost House, home to a mysterious recluse, site of whispered rumors. In Astoria, however, there’s a ghost on nearly every block. The Flavels — in memory, at least — haunt the glitzy Flavel House Museum, an 1885 confection built for Captain George Flavel, the area’s first millionaire.

The Scandinavians and the Chinese who staffed Astoria’s fishing boats and canneries are mostly ghosts, too, although their presence lingers around the defunct Finnish sauna in Uniontown, under the Astoria-Megler bridge, and Astoria’s ubiquitous Chinese restaurants.

The 164 steps spiraling up to the top of the Astoria Column, a concrete monument on Coxcomb Hill above town, each have individual sponsors; step 163, for example, belongs to the House of Chan, while step 164 goes to Lord Astor of Hever, descendant of the town’s namesake, John Jacob Astor.

The column, built in 1926, is decorated on the outside with intricate plaster-and-paint images chronicling the growing influence of white culture on the region, from the discovery of the river to the arrival of the railroad. The view from the top is even more spectacular: on a clear day, climbers can see both Mount Rainier to the northeast and the broad curve of the Pacific to the west.

Even on a calm summer’s day, the river and the ocean go to war. The force of the river combined with tides and weather conditions produce shifting sandbars and high waves, creating trouble for water traffic and regular employment for the Coast Guard as well as bar pilots licensed to guide ships across the river’s mouth.

Over the past two centuries, some 2,000 ships have foundered here and 700 lives have been lost under the waves; not for nothing is the region called the Graveyard of the Pacific.

Along Astoria’s waterfront, the Columbia River Maritime Museum gives a fuller picture of just how dangerous life on the water can get. The museum, sculpted like a series of wooden waves, is full of ropes, signal flags, scrimshaw samples, duck decoys, and paintings of sailing ships.

But its core exhibits are devoted to the difficulties of maritime life, ranging from commercial fishing to tugboat piloting to Coast Guard duty.

Boating is everyday business in Astoria. The town bears the distinction of being Oregon’s only port of call for cruise ships plying the waters between California and Canada. The Port of Astoria tracks the local cruise-ship schedule on its Web site, listing 18 arrivals in 2007 and 19 for 2008.

None, however, stops by in the dark months of December, January, and February. If you want to hop a vessel tour in winter, try Astoria’s river cruise instead; the Queen of the West sails at least once a week.

For half a century, one of the area’s major attractions has been Fort Clatsop, a replica of the fort Lewis and Clark built as their winter quarters for the dreary months bridging 1805 and 1806.

“O! how horriable is the day,” lamented Clark in his journal about the steady rain, hail, and wind. Grim, too, was the night in October 2005 when the fort’s wooden buildings burned down in an accidental fire. But archaeologists finally got the chance to excavate the site, and curators the chance to build a more historically accurate replica.

The new fort was dedicated in late 2006; a year later, those fierce December winds knocked down hundreds of trees and closed park trails. Park staff sighed and got to work again. Resilience in the face of the elements defines this region; even the Web site of the local chamber of commerce features a page titled “Fun In The Rain.”

Not far from Fort Clatsop, out on the ocean beaches west of Astoria, lists the slowly rusting carcass of the Peter Iredale, a British bark that ran aground in 1906. Signs in Fort Stevens State Park simply point to “Shipwreck,” and at the end of the beach parking lot, there it is: stuck in the sand, the tides running in and out through its gaping metal frame. Weatherbeaten and yet still there, proud. Much like Astoria itself.

Destinations

Flavel House Museum
441 8th Street, Astoria
503-325-2203
www.cumtux.org

Astoria Column
Atop Coxcomb Hill, up 16th Street above downtown Astoria
Open daily, dawn to dusk

Columbia River Maritime Museum
1792 Marine Drive, Astoria
503-325-2323
www.crmm.org

Fort Clatsop
92343 Fort Clatsop Road, Astoria
503-861-2471
www.nps.gov/lewi

Fort Stevens State Park
Off Highway 101, 10 miles west of Astoria
www.oregonstateparks.org/park_179.php

Information

Astoria and Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce
111 West Marine Drive, Astoria
800-875-6807
www.oldoregon.com

Lodging

Rosebriar Inn
636 14th Street, Astoria
800-487-0224
www.rosebriar.net

Rose River Inn
1510 Franklin Avenue, Astoria
888-876-0028 or 503-325-7175
www.roseriverinn.com

Dining

Baked Alaska (One 12th Street, Astoria, 503-325-7414, www.bakedak.com) proffers fresh oysters, salmon and a twist on its namesake dessert (ice cream atop hot cookie dough) in a white-tablecloth setting built out on a pier above the Columbia.

Cannery Cafe (One Sixth Street, Astoria, 503-325-8642, www.cannerycafe.com) specializes in casual lunches (soups, salads, sandwiches) and an array of housemade desserts, ranging from enormous cookies to elaborate pavlovas.