How is the humidity and bugs in OR? (Portland, Eugene: house, camping)

[kjones575]

I would like to move to OR, am from the east coast, with looong winters and humid, buggy summers. I visited my son in WA and found it to be very low humidity. Is this the case in OR as well? And do you get attacked by all manner of annoying insects( gnats, mosquitoes, deer flys, ticks etc) when you are outdoors with the dogs or gardening, hiking,etc?

[gnarfle]

Oregon is a pretty diverse state when it comes to climate and weather. For summertimes, the coast is cool and breezy. The valley is moderately warm (typically summer day is upper 70's to lower 80's), dry and low humidity. The mountains can get hot and full of mosquitos (typically 4-8 weeks after the snow melts). The high desert and eastern oregon tend to be hot and dry.

As a general rule the valley (Portland, Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) tends to have wonderful summers with low humidity, pleasantly warm days, zero rain and not many bugs. However you pay for that with 8 months of rain the rest of the year (well, excluding our atypical weather lately).

[BruceM]

Originally Posted by gnarfle

Oregon is a pretty diverse state when it comes to climate and weather. For summertimes, the coast is cool and breezy. The valley is moderately warm (typically summer day is upper 70's to lower 80's), dry and low humidity. The mountains can get hot and full of mosquitos (typically 4-8 weeks after the snow melts). The high desert and eastern oregon tend to be hot and dry.

As a general rule the valley (Portland, Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) tends to have wonderful summers with low humidity, pleasantly warm days, zero rain and not many bugs. However you pay for that with 8 months of rain the rest of the year (well, excluding our atypical weather lately).

I would agree with your 1st paragraph but the part about 8 months of rain is way off base.
It would be more correct to say we have 8 months in which rain is possible or likely.
You make it sound like we get 8 months of solid rain.
Our avg annual rainfall here in the Willamette Valley is around 45" - 50" which is less than Atlanta and many other regions of the US.
We seldom get thunderstorms or heavy gully washers.
Instead we'll get a shower, then sunshine, then another shower. Wash, rinse, repeat I call it.
And sometimes it just drizzles all day long.

Oh, and mosquitoes are only bad in the Cascades in early summer.
We were at Waldo Lake, known for it's abundant mosquitoes, in early Sept. and we did not suffer 1 bite.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Oregon has lots of big hungry mosquitoes.

No fireflies, no black flies. There are ticks in the Willamette Valley.

No place in Oregon has humidity as bad as the humidity on the East Coast, but there is definitely some humidity. Some places have a lot of humidity, just not as bad as the East Coast.

Fleas are really bad anywhere west of the Cascades. If I take my dogs to the Willamette, I flea powder them before they get into the car to come home so we don't bring fleas home with us.

[Tulippsy]

I was dismayed to see a stinkbug on the balcony yesterday.

[bler144]

Originally Posted by Tulippsy

I was dismayed to see a stinkbug on the balcony yesterday.

The stinkbugs were really bad in the fall where I am, and we've seen a few in the house over the winter. That was new to me. On that note, what we're really speaking to is that bugs in the valley have historically been negligible. It may not stay that way forever. What was it, 2009 or 2010 when spring was abnormally warm and wet in the valley?

That year Eugene actually had some significant mosquito swarms - not on par with the Wisconsin or Maine northwoods by any stretch, but a reminder that the climate is part of what keeps the bugs out, as gnarfle says. If the climate does shift for any reason, staying bug-free or even bug-light is not a guarantee.

The other thing that helps here is, compared to swaths of the midwest and east, we don't get a lot of standing water in spring/summer - a lot of our natural waters are rivers, not, say, bogs or swamp, and nearly 2/3 of the rainfall we do get typically falls Nov-March. So that old tire swing in your backyard in your backyard doesn't tend to turn into a hatchery. What little rain does fall in a typical summer is evaporated again in fairly short order.

Areas that are wetlands in the valley (as well as rail lines, etc.) tend to get sprayed, despite the environmental reputation of the region.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

Originally Posted by Tulippsy

I was dismayed to see a stinkbug on the balcony yesterday.

They like to crawl under the house siding where it's warm and kind of hibernate through the winter.
(My buddy in Albany told me he took down a small piece of vinyl siding on his house that was loosening during a storm and there were TONS of stinkbugs under it.)

I believe they live less than a year, so that stinkbug you saw probably overwintered, and is now coming out to party (eat and mate)!

It was a very warm winter, so I'll bet you will see more if you look around!

[patches403]

Originally Posted by kjones575

I would like to move to OR, am from the east coast, with looong winters and humid, buggy summers. I visited my son in WA and found it to be very low humidity. Is this the case in OR as well? And do you get attacked by all manner of annoying insects( gnats, mosquitoes, deer flys, ticks etc) when you are outdoors with the dogs or gardening, hiking,etc?

In the Willamette Valley, no issues with mosquitoes or flies. Issues with gnats only in some wetland/greenspace areas. Ticks I'm not sure about as we treat our dogs so they don't pick up fleas or ticks to begin with, but I'm guessing there must be lots of both. One thing the Willamette Valley does have is lots of spiders, but only a couple of them are poisonous and your odds of encountering a poisonous one are very small.

Central/Eastern Oregon has all of the insects you listed; but I've spent a lot of time outdoors there and only rarely been bothered by any (except for ticks, definitely treat your dog for ticks in Central Oregon). Much of this area of the state is dry so not great breeding opportunities for bothersome insects; the exception would be around some bodies of water and wetland areas.

The coast visited many times and only had one trip when camping that we had an issue with mosquitoes once the sun went down. This was near Netarts.

To sum up; the only bug issues we have ever had that were bothersome were ticks. If you have a dog you definately want to treat for fleas and ticks spring/summer/fall. The spiders bother my husband as he just has a dislike of them, but we haven't encountered any harmful ones. Oregon's climate is nothing like the East coast. Our summers are dry and low humidity so very comfortable for outdoor activities day and night (although most nights would require a jacket to keep warm). Even with all the winter rain, the climate and conditions are not conducive to breeding for mosquitoes and most of the other troublesome insects that do well on the East coast or in the South.