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How Rainy Is Seattle? It's Not Even in the Top of Major U.S. Cities (2019)
- nh23423fefe 5y agoI was never really bothered by the rain in seattle, it was the overcast that did me in. Everything felt so muted with no crisp shadows.
- cronix 5y agoMuted is a perfect description. The lack of sun, almost constant cloud cover and moisture/slight fog in the air always makes all of the vibrant colors seem dull. Muted. It's like having your RGB color ranges only go to 128 instead of 256. Then summer comes and everything is bright and colorful for 3 months, and everyone has a smile on their face again. They might actually say, "hello."
- turtlebits 5y agoFor me, April to late September is perfect in Seattle. My only gripe is the month of continuous rain in the winter.
- bigbacaloa 5y agoOne thing is amount of precipitation. Another different thing is percentage of time cloud covered. Seattle is surely higher on the list with respect to the second thing, and thus it's reputation. In new Orleans, when it rains, it really rains hard, but it's sunny a lot too.
- waynecochran 5y agoAs I always say "it doesn't rain a lot in Seattle, it just rains all the time."
- capableweb 5y agoMaybe time to update your quote to say Buffalo instead of Seattle then, as it has more rainy days than Seattle or any other major US city.
- mywittyname 5y agoSure, it rains/snows half of the year, but it rains the mostly in the winter-spring half of the year. So there's some reprieve in the summer and fall months. Seattle sees the sun, in what, July-August? That makes a big difference, I think. Grey, gloomy, rainy days are more impactful when they occur during the times you want to be outside. Generally speaking, you can make outdoor plans on Lake Erie during the summer and be pretty confident it won't rain. Right now though? It's going to be raining/snowing basically most days for the next few weeks.
- bombcar 5y agoIf you're counting precipitation, it'll be different than how people count it. Seattle basically never snows, Buffalo gets a few months of snow.
- manacit 5y agoIt's cloudy, but not necessarily rainy (though there's plenty of that too). Even measuring the "number of days of rain" isn't the right metric for how Seattle gets it's reputation. Look at the "cities with the least amount of sun": https://www.city-data.com/top2/c475.html https://www.city-data.com/top2/c475.html - the entire top 20 is cities in Western WA.
- limaoscarjuliet 5y agoI know a few folks who live in Seattle, and they all - at one point or another - attempted to convince me Seattle is not rainy. This alone is a proof Seattle is rainy enough. On a more serious note, I agree it is about relatively little sun rather than amount of rain per se that builds this cloudy, rainy feeling in Seattle.
- timr 5y agoTotal volume of rain is fairly meaningless here. The rain in Seattle comes less as "rain", and more as a mist that never ends for 3/4ths of the year. It's like standing under the vegetable misters at the grocery store if they turned out the lights.
- bombcar 5y agoExactly, people call it "rainy" when it may not technically be raining. Seattle has a very distinctive weather pattern, and it does NOT burn off like morning fog in other cities, even though it has some similarities to heavy fog.
- Tiktaalik 5y agoThe rain often comes at night too, so for much of the year you experience a feeling that it has just rained, and everything is wet, but it's not actively raining.
- WorldMaker 5y agoA thing I learned in a random puzzle quest that stuck with me is that much of the PNW makes up North America's largest rainforest. We associate the term rainforest primarily with Tropical Rainforests and especially the Amazon Forest in South America, but the Pacific Northwest has and is a rainforest. Rainforests themselves are named that not for volume of rain that they have, but the consistent feeling of rain that they have. The forest itself helps build and maintain that constant "misting" water cycle that gives the feeling that it is consistently raining/has just rained/will still be raining for months at a time. That's an important part of the ecodiversity of the region, so it makes sense that it also becomes an important part of the human culture of the region (that reputation that "Seattle is always raining" despite having less rainfall than many other major US cities by volume and other metrics). But yeah, its always raining in the manner of a rainforest, not the manner of a squall or rainstorm.
- MiddleEndian 5y agoComing from Boston (and then returning to Boston), my favorite part of Seattle was the weather. It was so mild all the time, didn't need to think about it (except the one week in the summer everyone would melt because nobody had A/C).
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- edgyquant 5y agoThis is how I feel coming from Illinois. It’s basically always spring in Seattle
- enobrev 5y agoSame. I lived in Chicago and NYC before living in Seattle for a couple years and found the weather to be gorgeous almost year round. Weather-wise it was significantly better than both. Lots of sun and plenty clear days and so much to do and see when the weather was right. When it did rain it was just a little mist or the occasional drizzle. What's funny is that every time I see Seattle in a movie or tv show, it's constantly pouring. Weather I've almost never seen there for longer than a couple hours.
- carlgreene 5y agoRain was never my problem with Seattle's weather. It was the lack of sun and the darkness in the winter that forced me out. Living there when I was younger I didn't know any different. It wasn't until I moved and lived somewhere else for a bit that I realized there was a better place for me out there. Sun has such a positive effect on my mood I don't know how I did it there for so long.
- phillypham 5y agoI always felt Seattle got this reputation because we have so many transplants from California, particularly the Bay area and SoCal. Relative to there, it rains a lot.
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- twofornone 5y agoI love rain, and was actually looking forward to having as much as people said when moving to Seattle. But as I discovered, the thing about Seattle rain is that, while frequent, it's more of an annoying mist that just kind of gets in your face, rather than actual pleasant pitter patter. The 3 months of summer though have pretty constant perfect weather that's hard to beat.
- qiskit 5y agoSeattle isn't rainy. It's pathetically drizzly. Flimsily misty more than anything. It hardly ever rains in seattle. By rain, I mean a real downpour where you can get soaked. The kind of rain you need an umbrella for. Hardly anyone owns an umbrella in seattle for a reason.
- Syonyk 5y agoAnd when it does rain, the roads flood, and the trees all come down in the wind, because the 100' tall pine has a root ball that goes down two or three feet (as there's no need to go deeper for water, given the constant drizzle). When that top layer of soil is saturated and no longer structural, there's literally nothing holding the tree up anymore. Plus literally everything grows moss.
- ryantgtg 5y agoI moved to Seattle from Southern California, with a motorcycle as my transport, and I lasted one month before I moved away. It drizzled every single day.
- treeman79 5y agoI always thought downpours were just a movie special effect; Not real. I stood in awe when I went to Florida.
- deschutes 5y agoI had a similar belief that ended much the same.
- marlowe221 5y agoWe moved to Portland, Oregon from Jackson, Mississippi last year. Portland, like Seattle, is a stereotypical "rainy" city and Jackson is not. Jackson gets almost 10 inches MORE rain per year on average than Portland does. For one thing, in Portland it doesn't rain at all from mid June to mid August (it rains year round in Jackson). But reputations are interesting things!
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- rootusrootus 5y agoIME it rains harder in the midwest, for less time. In Portland it pizzles most of the winter. Not really raining hard, just constantly wet. But summers are excellent. I also think this has changed a lot in recent years. I've been in Portland close to 50 years and it feels like the climate has been growing warmer and drier over time.
- bombcar 5y agoThe total amount of rain really isn't important to human perception, save perhaps flooding. One day where you get ten inches of rain vs the same ten inches spread over 100 days - people will say the second is "rainy" and the first not.
- egypturnash 5y agoGulf South rain is such a different beast from the incessant drizzle the Northwest gets. Southern rain comes in, does its business with a solid downpour, maybe some lightning, and leaves. The skies clear and you get sun. Northwest rain just sits there with an incontinent drizzle and grey skies for days on end. Make sure you’re getting lots of vitamin D supplements, because you’re not getting the kind of sunshine your body’s used to.
- rednerrus 5y agoAre we talking inches per year or days of sunshine per year?
- alistairSH 5y agoThe title and text is based on volume. But the chart included has both and Seattle is pretty darn rainy by days with rain.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoAt first I thought "oh neat maybe it's easier to grow plants there since it's wet all the time", but then I realized this is probably terrible for plants. Too wet, not enough sun, lower temps slow growth
- bombcar 5y agoCertain plants love it - pine trees and blackberries are among them.
- alistairSH 5y agoUh, the list right there in the article puts Seattle as the 4th rainiest cities by days with rain. That sounds pretty rainy to me. :shrug: Seattle is also more rainy (by volume) that London UK. And more rainy (by days of sunshine) than Scotland.
- aldebran 5y agoThis is what I tell people who are surprised that you don’t see many umbrellas in seattle. Hoodies yes. Flip your hood up and go on with your day. The past couple of months though might be a bit different. The storm water area near me is overflowing.
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- asdadsdad 5y agoPeople come up with statistics and convince themselves, but if you live in Seattle you know. It drizzles almost every day except during the summer
- asdadsdad 5y agodon't know how it compares to London, though that's often the "twin city" in these arguments
- neallindsay 5y agoOhioans know. I grew up a few miles away from the Ravenna Arsenal in Northeast Ohio. The reason that I always heard for the military choosing that location to store munitions in World War II was because it had as much cloud cover year-round as pretty much any place in the nation. (Bombers and spy planes like to have clear days.) If you're looking for a place that is very wet but not on the ocean, the Great Lakes are where you want to be.
- taylodl 5y agoAnd we get brutal winters to boot! I like to joke about the enduring myth of there being an object in the sky called "the sun" that makes the sky glow during the day.
- TYPE_FASTER 5y agoI've been to Seattle twice. Both times I visited in July, and the weather was beautiful for the duration of the trip. When I returned home and asked a co-worker why Seattle has the reputation for rain, he replied "because you went during the two weeks a year when it doesn't rain." When I moved to Boulder, CO, I was lucky to have a view of the foothills at work. I was initially surprised at how frequently there was lightning/thunder activity in the foothills, accompanied by a light sprinkle of rain in Boulder. Another example of how metric selection matters I guess.
- js2 5y agoI have a feeling this is a case of lies, damned lies, and statistics, so let's look at typical summer rain day in Miami, the city of my youth, and #2 on the list. You wake up and it's sunny. Throughout the day, clouds build over the everglades. You get beautiful puffy cumulus clouds dotting the sky. Around mid-afternoon, darker clouds float in from the everglades and intersect with the cool ocean breeze: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Miamisummershower.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Miamisum... You get lightning and thunder and it starts to rain. It rains buckets of water of biblical proportions the likes of which you have never seen for about 30 minutes. Then it stops and suddenly it is sunny again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPNwuPen1zQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPNwuPen1zQ That's it. A rain day in Miami is typically a 30-minute extremely intense event surrounded by sunshine on both sides. Compare that with my current city, #14 on the list, and typical of a mid-Atlantic state in late spring. Today, we'll have drizzle all day long and 100% cloud cover. I imagine this is much more like most Seattle rain days than a Miami rain day. We'll get less rain all day today than Miami does in 30 minutes. While they are both nominally rain days, they leave very different impressions.
- adamredwoods 5y agoA good example how a little statistical manipulation can mislead people. Miami in this above chart says it rains more, and has almost as many rainy days, than Seattle-- yet, when we look at other data that compares amount of sunshine, Miami is incredibly sunny compared to Seattle: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-data/pctposrank.txt https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-data/pctposrank.txt
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoThought New Orleans would be near the top of the list. It's sandwiched between Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, there are other large thunderstorm producing lakes nearby like Lake Salvador. It is exceedingly odd out that way when you go more than 2 weeks without rainfall.
- nus07 5y agoWhat do expats/immigrants from UK and Ireland think about Seattle? Does it feel similar to the English/Irish weather or is it worse? Also Scandinavians ? Been meaning to ask this question for a long time. I would imagine for people from UK and Scandinavians Seattle and PNW weather isn't too depressing?
- pclark 5y agoI'm from East England and moved to San Francisco for 12 years and have now lived in Seattle for 2 years. Here is the secret of Seattle, why people live here: the summer is absolutely bonkers nice. For example in the last 2 years, temperatures over 60 degrees, temperatures over 70 degrees, days with over 0.2" rain: May: 9, 1, 7 June: 20, 5, 7 July: 31, 9, 1 August: 30, 10, 1 Sept: 23, 4, 5 It also remains super warm all evening. It's just great! But yes, being from windy gray England means Dec-Feb where it is very very grey doesn't bother me at all, I don't even notice it.
- mgarfias 5y agoI'm down a bit south of portland. Its not that it rains a ton. Its that except for the summer, it basically never stops raining. It gets OLD
- obarthelemy 5y agoMa family is from very sunny French Provence, and my brother married a girl from very not sunny Bretagne. The definition of "sunny" and "rainy" is.. up in the air. Examples: - is a sunny day a day during which you see the sun once for 4 mins, or during which you mostly see the sun, during which you don't see a cloud at all, during which you see some clouds with no chance of rain, .... - is a rainy day a day during which you see some heavy clouds and rain is so probable you should not plan a picnic, it may rain at any moment, it rains some, it never stops raining ... - can the same day be both rainy and cloudy ? -when we say "rainy", do we mean lots of mm of water, lots of days w/ rain, lots of days w/o sun. My previous county (in the Cévennes) had bth France's dryest spot, and its wettest. But not its sunniest nor its rainiest. - when I went to Bretagne, what shocked me was not so much the amount of rain, but the amount of clouds, and the speed of weather change, and the facts that very few days were pure rain or pure sun. In my Provence, I can usually tell 1 day in advance when it's gonna rain, sometimes 2 days, always on the same day. In Bretagne ? You can't know if it's gonna rain 2 hrs on. In the end, in Provence a rainy day is when we get one drop of rain. In Bretagne, a sunny day is when they get one ray of sun. We're right, and they're wrong ^^
- neoCrimeLabs 5y agoSomething else I noticed while living in Seattle. Compared to the US East coast and much of the mid-west it's FAR less muggy year-round in spite of constant overcast, rain, or mist for most of the year. I remember flying from Seattle to London a few years back and was surprised that in spite of the same weather, London was almost unbearably muggy -- it felt like I stepped into a swimming pool my skin felt so moist.
- morninglight 5y agoCould someone relate "muggy" to specific metric(s) that might support these claims?
- neoCrimeLabs 5y agoIn my experience most weather is reported with relative humidity, but dew point is also important. When the dew point reaches a certain level it is described by some as feeling "muggy". There is a feeling that your skin is wet because moisture on your skin has slowed (or stopped) evaporating because the air has saturated with moisture. https://www.weather.gov/arx/why_dewpoint_vs_humidity https://www.weather.gov/arx/why_dewpoint_vs_humidity
- neoCrimeLabs 5y agoIn hind sight I explained that poorly, but I'm also distracted in a meeting, so should probably be focusing on that. :-D
- animal_spirits 5y agoI always associate muggy with humidity
- TurkishPoptart 5y agoIt used to be that it would just mist for 6-7 months out of the year, instead of rain. And now it hardly even rains at all anymore. No longer a rainy city/region. Last year, summer lasted from April to October.
- morninglight 5y agoA picture is worth a thousand words: https://s.w-x.co/staticmaps/wu/wxtype/none/usa/animate.png https://s.w-x.co/staticmaps/wu/wxtype/none/usa/animate.png
- skyzyx 5y agoSeattle gets a beautiful 5 non-contiguous weeks of summer. The rest of the time is rainy or overcast. Source: I lived there for 8.5 years in the 2010s.