Hacker News Reader

Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

For me personally, I cannot ever relocate to Seattle because of the weather. I live in Boston, which has its own issues, but at least it's often sunny during the winter and I can get out for a walk most days.

I have a lot of family around Seattle and have visited frequently. One year I visited in May and it rained nonstop, oscillating between a soft drizzle to a torrential downpour, for 10 straight days! Too depressing for me.

View on HN

I encourage everyone in the Seattle area to constantly remind everyone of how much it rains. Hopefully it will slightly cut down on the number of Californians moving to the PNW.

i live on the other side of the mountains, its usually nice an sunny over here for most of winter, but much colder. We also have much hotter summers and forest fires in the late summer, but hey, no grey gloom.

this is funny because a solid ten weeks last summer was a grey gloom caused by forest fires, at least as viewed in kittitas and yakima counties.

As a long time Seattle resident the only way to make it through winter without becoming depressed is to take up skiing, kiteboarding or some other sport that is fun and gets you outside in winter. Additionally, a two week vacation to Hawaii or another sunny location is also a must. Otherwise SAD will start to ruin you by the time March rolls around. Last year was brutal as we only had 11 clear days between October and May.

Perception is a funny thing. Average annual precipitation for each city and sunny days per year:

Boston: 43.76in / 137 days

Seattle: 34.1in / 152 days

https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/boston/massachusetts/u...

https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/seattle/washington/uni...

From the same dataset:

Hours of sunshine during winter months (Dec + Jan + Feb): Boston: 464 Seattle: 235 (-50%)

Annual hours of sunshine: Boston: 2615 Seattle: 2019 (-23%)

so it's accurate to say that Boston is sunnier than Seattle and much sunnier during the winter.

And that's not silicon valley... say Mountain View, CA: - 560+ hours during winter months - 3,070 annual

https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem...

People do form weird perceptions, especially from short trips to places they don't know well, but your numbers are wrong.

137/152 are the number of days w/ precipitation, not sunny days. ie, Seattle has less rain, but more days of precipitation. This is typical comparing Seattle with many other cities: less rain total, but spread over more days.

Those more days are concentrated in winter, more so than in is typical in other parts of the country. If you look at the "hours of sunshine" stat over a whole year in your links, the typical seasonal change people complain about in the PNW is right there: Apr - Sep are similar, but Nov - Feb Seattle gets half as much hours of sun.

The concentration of gloomy drizzly days in winter is quite real.

It also doesn't help that the Seattle rises so late and sets so early for a couple of months during the winter, leading to more feelings of gloom.

I live in Bellevue (across the lake from Seattle), and get out for walks everyday with my 1 year old. Sometimes I have to put a rain guard over his stroller, but the rain is almost always light enough that I don't need to even bother with an umbrella for myself.

Rain in May is a bit weird (only 1.9 inches on average according to wiki), torrential down pours in Seattle are even weirder, especially outside of October/November.

EDIT: Ok, I get it...I get it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com