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I live on the San Juan islands and we get about half the rain of Seattle. I moved here from SLC.
Instead of asking us about the rain, ask yourself what you won't miss about living where you are.
Ask me if I miss the 4 or 5 storms that would drop 12" - 24" of snow in my driveway every year. Ask me if I miss the weeks when the temperature would never reach 32F. Ask me if I miss the 5 to 10 summer days over 100F.
A couple weeks ago I was talking to an old coworker. I asked him how the weather was. He said, "It's brutal. I'm driving around the Great Salt Lake and the car's thermometer says 101F." I said, "It's brutal here too. I'm sitting on a ferry and its 75F."
Yeah, I was happy to trade that in for rain and a moderate climate.
I've actually been missing the winter rain lately. I'm glad there is a chance of rain in the forecast for today and tomorrow.
I would love it of someone could explain why so many people say so many different things about how much rain there is and how gloomy it is in specific areas or towns in Washington. Isn't this weather stuff kind of definite, scientific and not just a matter of opinion? It either rains a lot or it doesn't. The number of rainy days, the duration, the number of gloomy days and when they occur would be a matter of fact, shouldn't it?
I agree with the sentiment of the prior posts. On an anonymous internet forum such as this, generally speaking, what you will read are opinions and not neccessarily hard scientific facts.
Sort of like the old joke about politicians: Ask two of them the same question and you'll get three different answers.
So my "equation" would be: Different people= different opinions, preferences and life perspectives= different answers.
I suspect that what will matter to you personally is you how you individually respond to our western WA gloomy late fall, winter and spring weather. As an example, I can tell my wife that on average our region gets x-number of dark gray or rainy days each November, December, January, February or March. It doesn't really matter to her though because after about 2 or 3 weeks of ongoing said dreary weather, she's thinking we need to move to St. Lucia whereas I haven't particularly noticed it nor been bothered by the protracted gloom.
I've also noticed that our maritime climate can take a while to wear a susceptible individual down. We've had several friends and acquaintances move here to rain shadow land where I live and after a few years many of them have had it with our winter weather and they move back to San Diego or some other similar sunny spot.
IMO it's these personal differences that account for the variability of responses you read here despite published weather statistics. Oh, and yes, this is just my opinion.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PS90
This is exactly right.
There aren't different OPINIONS on the rain in Washington - it rains how much it rains, and that's not subjective. But there are many different areas of Washington with different amounts of precipitation, and the rain/gloom affects people in different ways.
Yup... It depends on perspective and expectation.... I hope you are not expecting RAIN, we get very little. Mostly drizzle, no need for umbrella or boots, but.... It takes a lot of days to drizzle 40" to 100".
I work outside and tend farm stuff all the time (repairs, animals, fences, fixing leaky roofs, rotten hooves... ), That is a whole lot different in 200+ days of drizzle than having an office job, and a library habit. ymmv
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beernik
I live on the San Juan islands and we get about half the rain of Seattle. I moved here from SLC.
Instead of asking us about the rain, ask yourself what you won't miss about living where you are.
And consider what you might miss.... Tornadoes, Raging lightning and thunder storms, moonlit nights, glistening snow across the prairie, incessant wind, sweltering summer days when a cool watermelon hits the spot, bugs, snakes, sunrise, sweat.... You will not miss shivering, while it is not COLD, it is wet and cool. In PNW I wear long underwear 150 days per yr. When living in Colorado I wore it ~10 days / yr.
Your experience will be different than mine, and anyone else.
I hope your car does not leak when it rains. That is a PITA to track down.
Also, any place is a mix of things you like and dislike. If you think someplace is perfect, you haven't seen much of it, or you have not lived there for long.
The PNW dampness is a mixed blessing, beautiful sometimes, often good for vegetation, nice for skin and hair health, but also deadly when trees fall or homes get flooded, or mudslides slump.
You can make different points about a dry area, but it too will have both good and bad points.
Unlike some of the magazine Best Of lists, no place can be given a number rating based on an aggregate of features. Not only are many features highly subjective, the lists are never, ever comprehensive.
And consider what you might miss.... Tornadoes, Raging lightning and thunder storms, moonlit nights, glistening snow across the prairie, incessant wind, sweltering summer days when a cool watermelon hits the spot, bugs, snakes, sunrise, sweat....
Well said. When it comes to Mother Nature, you take the bad with the good.
There are many micro-climates in the Puget Sound area. My husband works in Mukilteo, 35 minutes south of where we live in Stanwood. He always calls before he leaves work and often asks about the weather at home. It can be raining torrents where he is, but the sun is peaking through the clouds at home... or the opposite. He calls because he knows traffic is very much impacted by rain here. Yep, rain. And hang onto your hat if it's snow.
He works in what is called "the convergence zone," which Edmonds may be a part of, I'm not sure. Edmonds is close to Mukilteo and close to the water as well. In the convergence zone, there can be snow, yet just up or down the freeway 10 minutes or so, there's nothing going on. OK, maybe a little rain, but no snow at all. And again, it can be just the opposite, but it is common to be driving up I-5, say from Seattle, and suddenly hit swirling snow as you near Everett, and then as soon as you pass through, it's turned to light rain or even nothing at times.
When we moved here 13 years ago, we rented for 6 months before looking to buy, so we could check out the best areas. We didn't know then just how smart that decision was because we learned very quickly that weather can very different depending on where you live within even a 20 mile radius.
Here's an example. We rented a place off exit 212 just 5 minutes east of the freeway. We made friends with our next door neighbor and so we still see them regularly 13 years later. We now live off exit 206, six miles south the freeway but on the west side about 10 minutes from the freeway. We still have the same zip code.
When it snows at our place, we get maybe 2-6 inches. Our friends get at least one foot, often more because they are at about 500 feet elevation. We are at about 300 feet elevation, and then when we leave for work and reach the freeway, which is probably closer to sea level, they've had no snow at all!
As for rain, the rain is usually a very light rain that is not drenching in the least. It goes on and on for days and weeks from November to March. Sun is rare, and when it comes, you get it very late in the day for a short time just peaking through the clouds usually from the west. The rest of the year, it's often gray without rain, just that "nothing going on" type of day, dreary, except from mid to late July through September. There is NO exaggeration when people say these are the most glorious, exquisite days you can imagine. It's is breathtakingly beautiful here, and even in the winter when it's all rainy and gray, it's lush green because there are so many evergreen trees here, winter isn't all dead looking. It's just really dark, but super shiny green.
Take today.. Hmmm...August 2....summer....I'm looking out the window and the sky is white-gray, dull blank, no texture, just whitish-gray. It's cool, mid 60s, so the temp is lovely. Oh...I see it's just started raining. But yesterday, it was one of those utterly glorious days people talk about, and we'll get more of them soon.
It took me about 8 years before the gray got to me. I have always loved the gray and clouds and rain, but even I hit my limit. What a lot of people do here is take a quick flight down to California in the winter for a long weekend. Or they get deeply into something they love indoors and ride out the gray days OR they just enjoy nature in its glory, whether it's rainy or sunny.
This is a unique area with a pleasant climate and few extremes, but like everywhere, there are trade-offs. Yes, it does rain here a lot, but it's not heavy in the least. Yes, where you live in the Sound does make a huge difference if you're sensitive to weather. I forgot to mention the rain shadow areas. They also have specific micro-climates and tend to be sunnier.
Start studying the area. Read Scott Sisteck's blog on the local news website, KOMO weather. He's a great writer and goes into detail about what's going on weather-wise all over the Sound. Have fun! Seattle Weather | News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO
To OP: When I first started visiting this forum and asked about the rain reality, there were a couple of responders, ne in particular who I swear, were making it their personal mission to poison me (and anyone else) from ever coming to WA......their responses were so extreme. The fact that I'm from San Diego made it all the more amusing & laughable to them; they seemed to think I couldn't possibly live without my sun or flipflops, and that my own frame-of-reference comparisons of what I thought gray, drizzly, or rainy weather was no match for the reality of WA gray, drizzly & rainy. They were such bearers of gloom & doom about it I couldn't help ask them why THEY stay if they are so freakin' miserable? There was a litany of excuses.... but obviously not enough reason for them to move, only (for my own good) to be ambassadors of keeping others out due to the awful gray stuff from above.
Funny thing was, a lot of kind posters were simultaneously messaging me privately, telling me who the forum demagogues were who do this as a routine, for the exact purpose apparently of trying to prevent more people from moving to WA. Needless to say, I began taking the Gloom&Doomsters with a grain of salt.
But more importantly, I began doing the research myself, finding weather cam sites that show the actual LIVE weather in WA cities that you can observe for yourself, as often as you want online....without your having to go, or until you can go visit in-person. It's a great way to see a years-worth of what's really happening *in every season*, not just during the time you may happen to visit. You can find these weather cam sites easily online. I don't think I'm supposed to post external link sites on here, so won't.
I also zeroed in on the actual town we are personally interested in moving to and hunted around a bit, found a lot of forums or groups devoted specifically to THAT community, reached out to folks/residents who were amazingly helpful, and got a MUCH clearer picture of what weather (and many other things) were really like in that specific place. I've since made very good online friends with some of these folks who I hope will one day be my community neighbors. BTW, they are a far cry from that other thing you probably hear a lot about - the PNW FREEZE. Never met friendlier, more welcoming people IN MY LIFE.
I encourage you to pursue a similar research path to round out your research portfolio.
I don't know for sure......once we move there, I may take a similar protective stand as far as not wanting others to move to *my* area either - lol!...so I don't know that I can fault those who do this sort of thing, so heavy on the "You'll be MISERABLE here! Don't DO IT!" advice. You'll only really know once you're there, or go into it with eyes very wide open as to the reality of what your desired area's rain, gloom, drizzle is really like.
As some others have pointed out, keep in mind and don't forget what you are leaving behind. For me, that's extraordinarily hot and humid summers that are getting longer each year and causes me to have the same kind of depression and lackluster quality of life that some describe having in gray drizzly weather. What some WA naysayers don't seem to *get* is that weather extremes in either direction can reduce quality of life in a huge way. For me personally, even if the gloom and doom is truly as awful as they say, I'd still TAKE IT and feel way more productive in it because I'm not melting in a constant pool of sweat that robs me of ambition and makes me me feel physically ill 4+ months of the year. For me, that quality of life is not good either.
I'm from San Diego, too! My parents took me on many road trips all through the US and Canada when I was growing up, so I learned what was out there. I hated the south for the heat and humidity, and I loved the PNW for its green and cool and rain. I never forgot this, and lived for the day I could move here. In 2003, I did.
See my post above. When I read that you hadn't actually moved up here yet, I took note. Your last paragraph sounds EXACTLY like me and what I was saying prior to moving, and also after moving. I'll never forget a few weeks before we moved here in 2003 sitting in the car in early January in a Vons parking lot waiting for my mother to get her bananas and seeing a guy in flip flops and shorts sweating as he carried his 2 12-packs of Bud to the car in time to watch the Super Bowl. It was 80+ degrees, and that was in Bay Park, not East County. I was almost crying in happiness that I was leaving such a place.
But like the hideous heat and humidity, the gray and dreary get old after a while. It can sink into your bones and your heart and your soul. I could tell you more, some good, some bad, particularly how allergies can be triggered in people here because of the lush vegetation and trees and just how THAT affects your quality of life. I, unfortunately, will likely have to move because my quality of life is so poor now here, but I return to my usual self as soon as get into a more arid climate. I'm deeply saddened, but there's also a part of me that is curious about what it will be like to live again where I can ride my bike whenever and rollerblade whenever and do the stuff I took for granted whenever.
I'm realizing balance is key. Some sun, some rain, some gray, Yeah! Too much of any is draining, absolutely. I won't be going back to San Diego, so I get you totally, but I will be moving south. Note that the humidity here is very high here, too, but because it's not so hot, the humidity just weighs me down some. I try to water my plants, but I'm covered with mosquitoes morning and evening. Only in the heat of the day can I avoid them to some degree. My dog lies outside and is covered in them. I run my hands along her face and muzzle to get them off her and have blood all over my hands. When I moved here, heartworm was not an issue because of the temps keeping mosquito population down, but like in California, it's heating up here, too. That can be seen as a good thing and a bad thing.
As for the posters trying to keep people away, I've found the people here rather balanced for the most part. The posters trying to keep people away are obvious. And frankly, everything I've read on this post has been accurate and fair. It IS gray A LOT. If you go to the data pages, they will comment on "sunny" days, but those "sunny" days often mean the sun peaked through the clouds from 4-5 pm.
OH! And what I didn't know when I moved here was how the days go in the seasons. It's dark, totally dark by 4pm and doesn't get light until 8am, and I mean "you can see a bit" light at 8am, but it's really about 8:30 that it's light in the winter. In the summer, which I have the most trouble with, the birds are singing by 3:30am, it's fully light by 4:30 am, and it doesn't get dark until 10pm. To be honest, the long summer days were the hardest thing for me to adjust to. Winter wasn't so bad, but birds waking me up at 4am?! And trying to go to bed before 10 pm, very hard, even with blackout blinds because you see the light before you draw your blinds, and it's hard for the body to let go that it's daytime, up and at it!
So, I'm not telling you to not move here. I think this is a fantastic place for many reasons. There's a generosity of spirit the people have here that I don't find elsewhere, not just in California, but other states, too. It's easy to work with government and corporate and health behemoths, unlike in California. People are helpful here. They genuinely care and want to do a good job, and so it's not so hard to get your needs met, especially when you may have a complicated situation. There's just so much lovely up here, but it's not perfect like I thought it was and couldn't say enough bad about San Diego comparing before I actually knew the difference from personal experience.
There are definitely things I miss from San Diego, such as the freeways and how there's always an alternate route either on another freeway or on surface streets like Mission Gorge Road or Morena Blvd or Friars Road where you clip along quite fast. It's taken me 13 years to appreciate both and stop vilifying San Diego. And I also see more clearly the negatives here. It's all a trade-off.
Great post, Algiz....and thank you for your time composing that! Always nice to run-into a fellow San Diegan who's walked the path we hope to! Funny the SD streets you mentioned. Mission Gorge Rd. is right near where we live, and Morena Blvd. where my husband's business is. And my husband has extended family who live up in Stanwood! In 13 years time though, San Diego has grown exponentially. Yep, we have lots of freeways, but they are also looking more and more like L.A. Both sides of Friars Rd are completely developed up & down and way far back and even trying to use that as an alternate route is a joke. This article may give you a bit of a peek: Get Ready for Mission Valley's Massive Growth Spurt
And I very much agree that the majority of folk on this forum are extremely helpful, insightful, even inspirational and have the patience of saints, responding to so many of the same questions over and over! And this particular thread has been very positive and honest. (I was referring in my last post to old threads that existed when I first came to this forum) When you're new and seeking/hoping for educated answers, have a tendency to take people at face-value and hope they have good motives, it definitely can be off-putting to run into the "keep-the-hell-out" types who try to hammer you with their negativity. Ultimately, they kind of work against themselves though, being so extreme. It only made me wonder why they would be so extreme yet still stay in WA. And just prompted me to do more research on my own.....which yielded far more info totally contrary to their claims. So I guess only the meek and easily swayed never go-for-a-move. But the off-putters can keep trying if they like. No sweat off my brow. I know what posters to just not even bother reading anymore
I can't even say I hate or strongly dislike San Diego. The increasingly hotter weather has been trying, but it doesn't kill us. It's far from the only reason we'd like to try living in WA. And I don't feel like I have to condemn one place to move to another. San Diego will always feel like home to us as well. We've even strongly contemplated whether or not we may be able to pull-off keeping our current house and renting it out when we move to WA, as a back-up plan for if we really do grow to dislike the PNW, or want a sunnier climate in our elder years with easier conveniences. Whether we'll be able to afford to do that or not is something we're working on right now, may delay our actual move, but may be worth it for that bit of peace of mind. Or it could be a monumental headache being a long distance landlord, too! Might have to hire a property manager. Although we do still have one son living in SD who could handle that. Lots of possibilities we're considering. But yes, if the gloom really does get to us, we still have roots here in SD that we'll likely always have, and can hop on a plane and come get sunburned.
Everyone has such unique reasons for moving and what motivates them. My husband and I are not really trying to escape a place we hate so much (although the heat factor is a big one for me), but we're really looking for a new adventure to try at this chapter of our lives, and the terrain and available properties of WA is where it appears a lot of the things we want to do would be most optimal! I've been studying the area well over two years now and have made a LOT of connections.
We could stay safe and secure where we are now, where everything is a known entity and we never have to wonder how to figure out where a new DMV is, or find a new veterinarian, or a whole host of all the usual stuff one takes for granted in their familiar town......but then you might also always wonder what adventure you missed out on in life just because you were so comfortable, or scared off by the whatifs, or unwilling to accept that every place has it's drawbacks and disappointments, positives and not-so-positives.
We're ready for that adventure!!!
I greatly appreciate your input and hope you find the place you're most happy at, too!
~Carol
Last edited by carolochs; 08-05-2016 at 01:26 PM..
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