muskeetoes? ticks? humidity?

[jipsee]

Mark S., I remember spiders in the Seattle area, really BIG ones. I swear that one time I heard one walking on my living room wall...(lol) aarrgghhh!
I never had a problem with bugs other than the spiders. I went hiking in the Cascades many times and, compared to NH, didn't find the number of mosquitoes troublesome.
I loved the summers out there, it was such a relief to leave the hot humid NH summers behind. To me 75 degrees in summer is perfect, who needs it to 95 and so hot you can't do anything? There is a cool humidity that pervades the rest of the year. Sometimes the overcast days bothered me but it seemed that the sun came out a lot in the late afternoon. When it did, you could see the mountains on all sides, the big R, across the Sound, etc. and it was worth it. On the whole, the weather there didn't bother me like it does some people. There are no perfect places. To me, other than summer, it seemed to be the same season the rest of the year, cool, in the 50's, partly cloudy...weather where you can throw a sweater on and go for a walk and be fine.

[frogamigo]

Cool, I love spiders!! However, isn't the hobo spider predominantly established in the PNW? I believe it is non-native (originally from Europe), first establishing around Seattle.

E.g. map from U of Washington:


More info:
http://www.srv.net/~dkv/hobospider/story.html

[KidBlue]

You may want to consider No. CA if you like spiders. I just saw about a 4-inch tarantula on a walk a few days ago. We also have the indoor variety that actually make a "thud" sound if they drop to the floor!

But I would settle for spiders any day over the dreaded nightcrawlers

[Mark S.]

Originally Posted by frogamigo

Cool, I love spiders!! However, isn't the hobo spider predominantly established in the PNW?

I wasn't aware of it, but it looks like you're right. Ugly little buggers. I've never seen one of those inside my house, but I have seen some who look a lot like that in sheds and woodpiles and such.

Northwestern Washington is definitely spider country. They're everywhere. We've given up keeping them out of the house. You just have to learn to live with them. We've NEVER been bitten though --- and I usually try to capture and release them rather than kill them.

Despite Washington's rainy reputation, it isn't nearly as humid as the eastern U.S. It's midmorning as I type this, and humidity is at 75%. But mid-afternoon, it'll probably be down to 40%, with clear, sunny skies.

The big detriment to living in Western Washington is the traffic (some of the worst in the nation), urban sprawl, and crime. The latter is what finally made us so fed up that we're leaving. Gangs are rampant. Our home was burglarized a few months ago. Friends of ours had their car broken into three times one summer. We've had drug deals and prostitution on our streets. And the police are losing the battle.

If you are wealthy enough to get into one of the REALLY nice neighborhoods, you can get away from the worst of the crime, but even that is no guarantee. We moved into what we thought was a fairly quiet, middle-class neighborhood, but we've had drug deals in front of our house, prostitutes servicing clients in the abandoned car across the street, gang fights, etc. Come summer, we're outta here.