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FYI:
An Oregonian here.......
Summers in Oregon (west of the Cascades) are wonderful.
But they only last about three months.
The rest of the year it's cool, cloudy, overcast, and rainy.
You'll have a bunch of people saying it's not that bad and it's all a scare tactic by locals to keep you away, but those people have probably not lived in Portland longer than a few months at a time.
When you live here everyday and it's dark at 430pm and light at 0800am and constantly cloudy with no direct sunlight it WILL get to you. Just be aware of this. Portland can be a pretty depressing place in Jan Feb March April.
A lot of people think they can handle it, but end up moving after a year or so because of depression caused by lack of sunlight. They say that the great summers are not worth the long wet rainy season.
East of the Cascades is desert and very hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
Oregon is not all forests and rain. Just the west side, and more specifically the NW corner of the state.
Portland also considers itself the beer microbrew capitol of the west coast and Marijauna is considered pretty mainstream here. MJ use is not an issue with most people.
There is a huge medical MJ movement here and dispenseries/cafes are all over the place.
Also, don't expect people to be knocking on your door with welcome baskets and and warmly inviting you to the neighborhood. That stuff just doesn't happen here. Oregonians are pretty cool to newcomers until they get to know you and that may take a while. They are polite though. just not overly warm. One of the biggest complaints from people moving here is that the people are unfriendly. I've heard it said it's really hard to make friends here.
Last edited by pdxMIKEpdx; 08-09-2010 at 08:50 AM..
Location: Philadelphia, PA (Wanting to move) --Burlington, VT, Asheville, NC, Boulder, CO?
129 posts, read 404,175 times
Reputation: 35
Well, lets compare Burlington, VT (or VT in general) to Portland, OR (or Oregon in general) because I think the # of cloudy days is the same? I can definitely remember getting out of work around 4-5PM and it being dark and the sun waking me up bad at 7 or 8AM. Also, it's cloudy most of the year.
Will someone look up the stats on those two cities? Thanks!
Yeah, I do not like marijuana... I am straight-edge and want to only associate those who are drug-free, and preferably can live without alcohol. I am into health and matters of fitness... vitamins... meditation... yoga... I have no interest in drugs, smoking, or alcohol and prefer --for this new chapter of my life, to associate with like-minded folks.
*Scratches head* Hmm... is Eugene, OR any better? What I'm really looking for is natural beauty, progression, politics (which Portland/Eugene all has) but also an abundance of CODA and Alanon meetings and poetry slams... I need social support right now with some issues I have in my life, and I need to really be able to express.
I do not like humidity at all, or heat, and I have never been around rain all the time... I seem to be able to deal with snow though... the humidity kills me. I would be happy living somewhere where the highest (summer) heat average is in the 70's.
Just throwing this out there, but I heard Bellingham, and even maybe Olypmia, WA are similar to Burlington, VT and have good weather and are all the things I seem to be looking for?
The humidity in the northeast is high. You don't always feel it because it is a cool environment. This summer you feel the humidity because it has been so hot most of the summer. The dew point is always high. Winters are humid as well, but because it is cold you don't feel it. I'm not sure if you need to be in a dry environment or if you need an environment where you can't feel the humidity.
The humidity in the northeast is high. You don't always feel it because it is a cool environment. This summer you feel the humidity because it has been so hot most of the summer. The dew point is always high. Winters are humid as well, but because it is cold you don't feel it. I'm not sure if you need to be in a dry environment or if you need an environment where you can't feel the humidity.
Vermont is less humid than southern New England and coastal Maine. And you definitely feel the humidity a lot less there than you do in the mid-Atlantic states.
A typical summer in Portland, Oregon:
We have a joke that summer starts on JUly 5th.
I've kept track of this for years, and it seems to be true.
After a cool maybe rainy July 4th, it just dries up.
You may get 50 degree cloudy overcast mornings, but by mid afternoon the marine layer layer has burned of and it may get into the 80's or 90's. It may not rain, but you'll certainly get muggy days.
By October the weather changes. We don't get the cold crisp days of a NE autumn, the trees change colors but they are not vibrant like in the NE.
We don't have "Leafers" here.
Then the rain starts and the leaves hit the ground.
We rake them into piles, but nobody will jump into them because if you do, you will be covered with sticky little baby slugs and moldy leaves.
Winter is hard to understand unless you have experienced it. It's almost constantly overcast. A typical winter day is 40 degrees, overcast and drizzly.
If you compare rainfall averages with other cities, they may get more, but Portlands rain is just constant light misty drizzly weather that you almost need an umbrella for, but it's not worth the hassle.
Because of the winter time tilt of the earth, in the winter the sun here hangs on the low southern horizon, so even when it's clouds clear you don't get strong sunlight.
In the winter, when you do get clear sunny days, they are almost always very windy (a strong steady east wind from the arctic that flows through the gorge) and temps are in the teens.
It's not pleasant/comfortable to be outside.
We usually get a snow or ice storm about Christmas time and then it's back to rainy dizzly weather until March.
Those are the hardest days, because you at least have the excitement of the holidays during the beginning of winter, but after that it's just gloomy crappy weather for three more months.
The only thing thats green are the Fir trees.
The temps may be in the high 30's to high 40's, but the humidity will be up to 80 to 90% in the winter.
Just cold bone chilling damp depressing cold moist weather for days on end.
Then when spring shows up, you will get a sunny day followed by three days of rain, another sunny day followed by four days of rain etc.
It typically won't be just misty rain, but like this: Sunny for an hour, a downpour for half an hour, drizzle for three hours, then repeat.
IT DOES NOT DRY OUT. It's always wet whether it's raining or not during the rainy season.
A lot of "recent arrivals" need vitamin D supplements and SAD (Look it up) treatment by this time.
I don't think a Portland winter can be compared to an east coast winter at all, and just looking at statistics can be very misleading.
By the way, go over to the Portland forum and click on "Search this Forum" and enter the word "weather".
It is a very popular much discussed topic.
And like I said before on other threads, Beer and Marijauna are very accepted here in Oregon, considered normal, especially in the cities of Portland and Eugene.
And probably more in Eugene than Portland. In many ways, Eugene is more liberal than Portland.
Portland is a mess of liberality/green/weird hype on the surface, but strip away the BS and it's just another large city with large city problems. But it works hard at it's "image".
Portland and Eugene are big enough cities to find all the "social support groups" you need.
PNW people are polite, somewhat cool to strangers, and emotionally reserved, and it's not really easy to make "close" friends here quickly.
Last edited by pdxMIKEpdx; 08-10-2010 at 09:32 AM..
Location: Philadelphia, PA (Wanting to move) --Burlington, VT, Asheville, NC, Boulder, CO?
129 posts, read 404,175 times
Reputation: 35
The importance of "place" or disimportance.
If "home" is where we're "said to belong," then I guess the question I should ask is where is "home" to me. It would seem we've all had family and love (friends, partners) in our life, but for me life has always seemed like a terrancial downpour. Help me spell that?
I think I've lost my "footing" to put it nicely. My "home" has always been in nature, in my journal when I'm riding, and in Alanon. Alanon has become my family... yet sometimes it's sad, and I'm 26, and I'm still shedding tears from when I was 5... I miss the image of a "family" I never had... and I seem to gravitate towards "family," but often my "family" (partners) becomes the wrong kind of family, and I am hurt.
Is this about standards? I guess we've all felt lost from time to time, but what happens when we put our faith in others at the exclusion of ourselves? Have you ever lost yourself? Have you ever been baffled and bewildered how you arrived at a certain place in your life?
In times of need, do you have those around you who will just let you cry and "get it out?" What if you've no one but yourself and 4 walls? ...that, even because when you are surrounded by someone, they are not there because they are closed off? ...the only echoing you hear is the own echo of your voice? ...whispering prayers into the night sky... hoping, wishing, dreaming, living off denial like it's oxygen just to keep the dream, the "image" alive that a family one day is possible. Trying to create it in the moment with dilapidation... crumbles.
I guess I feel like my feet sank through the quicksand, and maybe I drowned before I had time to breathe. I know that it's possible to be redeemed, to find that faith (trust and belief) inside of you... to not give away your power so easily, but how do you do it when you've been so badly bruised and burned? ...who do you turn to for support? ...for relief?
Maybe this emphasis on "place" is not so important, yet I cannot help but think it can help enhance our lives or take away from it. I'm tired of floating in the negatives... what about moving to the positives. Or maybe I have to find a more neutral climate first?
My question for you I guess is how did you pick yourself up when you were that far down? I want you to think of a time, in your life, where you felt shattered... hopeless... afraid... alone... it can be very early on in your life, or recently. What feelings did you battle with? What did you feel in that moment? What was your head telling you that your heart was not? Where does "truth" lie in a lie?
I'm a vibrant soul longing to break out of this shell...
Maybe this emphasis on "place" is not so important, yet I cannot help but think it can help enhance our lives or take away from it.
I think you have to find peace within yourself first. You can move, but you'll be taking yourself and your problems with you.
My mom always tried to tell me it doesn't really matter wear you go, it's what's going on in the four walls of your house that really matter. Obviously, you don't want to move to a dangerous or depressing place, but I don't think a location can make someone happy.
I had a happy childhood. I lived in a blah house in a blah town. Since then I've lived in several places, really different situations, big city, suburbs, small town. I was pretty happy in all of them. After the initial excitement, I I took the best stuff for granted a bit and just settled in. There were things I liked in all of them and things that bugged the crap out of me (last town it was traffic in front of my house, here it's deerflies). I just pretty much adjusted to the norm and my life was pretty much the same in all of them. I can't say any of them changed my level of happiness, although I appreciated what they had to offer and some seemed to have more to offer. I think I'd be pretty much the same person wherever I lived.
I'd say my move to Vermont was initially the biggest disappointment only because I was expecting utopia and no place could have met my expectations. Now the smoke has settled and I love it here.
One thing I feel I've learned is that money or where you live won't make you happy. That has to come from the inside.
Vermont is less humid than southern New England and coastal Maine. And you definitely feel the humidity a lot less there than you do in the mid-Atlantic states.
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but look at the NOAA data as well as a 30 year tracking of humidity by the National Climatic Data Center and the National Weather Service. Vermont, NH, upstate NY and Maine are more humid than southern New England, MidAtlantic and many other regions in the country. It is all tied into the dew point and temperature. We don't always feel the humidity because it is a cooler climate. Most of this summer the humidity level has been well into the ninties. When it is hot that is when we feel it. The NOAA data includes AM and PM average humidity and Burlington, Vermont has a higher average PM humidity than many cities in Florida just as an example.
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Ugh, I wonder if Portland's quality of life is just like Burlington?
The importance of "place" or disimportance.
