Hacker News Reader

Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

>even if mist and dark skies envelop the scenery for much of the year.

Obviously written by someone who doesn't live in Seattle. Seattle is a beautiful city in a very beautiful location. Today it's sunny, 70 degrees, with spectacular views of the lakes, trees, and snow-capped Olympic mountains.

View on HN

It is, however, undeniably overcast-prone and short-dayed in winter.

I think it’s worth it, but it is a legitimate problem for some people.

To fend off uninformed remarks elsewhere in the comments, here’s Wikipedia on the climate of Seattle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Climate

And to fend off uninformed remarks about seasonal affective disorder, which is real but doesn’t account for every instance of feeling bad in winter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

I like being outside on nice days. On rainy days I enjoy coffee and coding. My winter productivity in Seattle is probably higher than it would be in Palo Alto.

The short days in winter are a drag, but are made up for by correspondingly long days in summer.

An excellent reference for climate data:

http://weatherspark.com/averages/29735/Seattle-Washington-Un...

I moved up to the Portland area a couple years ago from California, and I have considered going to U. of Washington for CS. I love the school, the campus is just beautiful and the city is really cool. But since moving up here, my productivity has taken a serious hit.

From the months of October well into June, I have a constant struggle to stay motivated with such dreary weather. I know Portland isn't Seattle, but I visit Seattle often and it's almost as "bad" as Portland when it comes to the weather. Many of my friends here don't mind the weather and actually love the rain. As someone that needs sunlight, I can't stay up here another year, I will be moving back down to the bay area this upcoming fall. It really is a shame because I do love Portland and Seattle very much.

If only the Northwest had just a little bit more sunlight, I would never consider moving down. But those few months in the Winter/Spring really take a toll on me.

I wonder how much of that may be a vitamin D deficiency or a kind of SAD? Too late for you to experiment with melatonin, high lux lights, or vitamin D, I guess.

I actually did take Vitamin D and 5-HTP for quite sometime (still take 5-HTP), and it did help me a little bit. My problem was the fact that every time I go outside to head to work/school, it's either raining, cloudy, foggy, or a combination of the three. And I used to love rain and fog when I lived in California, but it didn't last for 6+ months at a time.

Waking up in the morning during the winter has been the worst part. I have always been an early riser, but when I just moved here, for about a year I could barely get up at 9am.

I've had a hard time getting up in the morning all my life, and it was worse in the winters after moving to Portland. I ended up getting an earlier version of this gadget (http://www.amazon.com/Philips-goLITE-BLU-Therapy-Device/dp/B...), and found that a few minutes of blue-frequency light every morning turned me into a natural early riser. (I still don't like mornings, but I naturally wake up and get out of bed at the same time every day)

Your circadian rhythm is especially susceptible to the blue end of the spectrum so instead of a 10,000 watt sun lamp you can just use one of these (or perhaps a home-brewed equivalent with the right LEDs) to let your body know that, if you were in a better lattitude, the sun would be shining right now.

Seattle has better weather than Portland: the marine winds blow the clouds out of the way every now and then, whereas in Portland it feels like it can be overcast for months.

Summer is great in both cities.

I think seattle gets more sun breaks then portland thanks to the rain shadow of the olympics and areas like Wenatchee (no tech jobs) and the tri cities (tech jobs at PNNL or working on the nuclear waste cleanup at hanford) get much more sun and can be nice for weekend trips. Learning to ski is also a great way to enjoy the winters.

It's now early July. We can count all of the cloudless days this year so far on one hand.

Seattle averages about 200 mostly cloudy to overcast days per year, and about 90 that are partly cloudy. You're right, it's amazingly beautiful up here, but it's also not sunny most of the time. Even with the clouds, I'll take living up here over being back in the Bay Area any time.

It doesn't sound that you yourself have lived in Seattle for very long. The 2-3 nice months in summer are all you get before the continuously gloomy rest of the year. Check out the Bay Area sometimes to get a serious weather-culture-shock.

I've lived here for 33 years now.

But this is the best it's going to get, and we only have a few more weeks of it.

It is beautiful to me, but there are quite a lot of days with dark skies which does make it a little depressing.

To follow up, I live about in the middle of the metropolitan area. I regularly see in my neighborhood deer, coyotes, deer, eagles, herons, quail, mountain beaver, raccoons, squirrels, hawks, snakes, lizards, ducks, geese, mice, etc. How many cities can boast that? :-)

Los Angeles, believe it or not. Nearly all of those (minus beavers and eagles), regularly. Helps that I live at the base of the hills, I suppose, but that's city city city to the north and south.

Its also surrounded by the two incredible cities of Vancouver and Portland (a few hours drive to either). Also, the region is home to some of the best beers in the world (if you're a fan of hoppy beer).

It's also wonderful for waterskiing. We used to go out 3 days a week. With a drysuit you can ski all year. It's fun skiing along side the 520 bridge while the commuters rot in traffic :-)

And yes, Seattle traffic is terrible. It's one downside.

I personally enjoy the rainy days. They're quiet and peaceful, and make the air smell good. There's nothing quite like a nice rainy day when you're drinking coffee and working on your computer, in a plaid flannel shirt.

His description of Seattle is accurate. -lifetime PacNw'er

Lived there for 5 years before moving to SF last year. Love Seattle and summers are beautiful. But even I'll admit that that line isn't far off from the truth :).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com