Differences between Bellingham, WA and Ketchkan, AK (weather) (house, place to live)

[kayakak]

Hi there- wondering if there is anyone out there who has LIVED or at least spent ALOT of time in Ketchikan, AK and/or Juneau AND lived in Bellingham that could give me some kind of comparison in regards to the weather. How similar are they? Trying to gage before I attempt to make a move to WA state and decide on a place to live. We wont have much time to just go there for a while and live in Bellingham to decide so would love any input you all could give me.

For me- the rain was WAAAAAY too much to take in Ketchikan. Juneau was more tolerable but wondering what the comparison would be.

thanks!

[dubfan]

I haven't lived in Ketchikan (I have lived in Bellingham but I was very young), but the climate statistics don't lie. According to their respective Wikipedia pages, Ketchikan gets a yearly average of 153" of precipitation (37" snow) and Bellingham gets 36" of precipitation (10" snow). June is Ketchikan's driest month at 7.4" of rain, while November is Bellingham's wettest month at only 5.8". Bellingham is like Phoenix compared to Ketchikan.

[Botev1912]

Any place in Washington will have nicer weather than the city with the best weather in Alaska.

[texasdiver]

Lived in Juneau for 10 years. Juneau gets about half the rain of Ketchikan and the further you go north in Juneau (it is a long skinny city) the less rain.

In Juneau you sometimes barely get summer. My last summer there I was painting my house to get ready to sell and it took nearly the entire summer of weekends to find enough dry warm days to paint. So many weekends were rainy or drizzly. I really noticed it trying to paint more than I had before. Summers in the NW are not like that at all.

In the winter in Juneau from Nov to May you can take the normal gray rainy NW weather and drop the temp about 10-15 degrees so that those days in the 40s in the NW are in the 20s and 30s. You can get weeks of freeze and thaw. It will snow at night and then by mid morning it has warmed to rain which turns the snow to ice. Then it gets cold again at night and more snow. Then some more melting the next day. Then more snow until you just get an endless mess of slush and ice. Dirty piles of snow will be on the ground for months into April and May.

Basically you can do outdoor activities year round in the NW whereas in Juneau in mid winter the cold, ice, slush, and darkness pretty much drives most people indoors except on nice days when they get out to ski. Just getting outdoors to run or bike in the dark and slush and ice covered streets can be grueling. Hard core types do it but it is tougher. The ski area is up in the mountains about 10 miles so when it is raining in Juneau there can be 15 ft of snow at Eaglecrest.

[kayakak]

Thanks- just to clarify- I have lived in Juneau and Ketchikan for many years. What I was trying to get at is how Bellingham compares to those two cities just to get a gauge on how rainy it can be in Bellingham year round. Getting info from people who have lived in these places and can compare because they've experienced it is what I was looking for. I realize Ketchikan gets a million more inches of rain a year in comparison but Im looking at actual rainy days vs. sunny/partly cloudy/cloudy days. In Ketch it felt like it was wet every day except for maybe a week or two out of the year. The same could be said of other places in WA except with a smaller amount of rain but it just be spread out over time as drizzle and lighter rain.

thanks

[Trigger-f]

Only lived in Bellingham for a year, late 90's. It rained from Oct to late April / May pretty much every day; occasionally the sun came out here and there but overall it pretty much rained almost every day. Cloudy/rainy days is pretty much the norm, however, when the sun comes out, nature comes alive, it can be beautiful, especially the mountains. Usually you get a window of sunshine every so often but it doesn't last too long.

Lately been visiting mainly at Christmas time (for some strange reason I much prefer B'ham in the Winter than Summer).