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Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

Fifteen years ago, I moved from Orlando to Seattle, and almost 20 degree change in latitude. On top of that, Orlando is famously hot and sunny and Seattle famously cold, cloudy, and rainy.

Despite that huge change, I adapted to the new climate just fine. I don't mind the gloom or the cold. The six months of gray skies don't get my down like they do a lot of people.

But even after a decade, I still haven't gotten used to how much the day length changes. Every summer my brain keeps expecting the sun to go down any second now while it sits up there near the horizon giving an extra two hours of daylight. Every winter it feels like the sun disappears too early.

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Seattle’s climate is a joy.

It’s rarely super hot or super cold like a lot of places.

You get these ridiculously long summer days that last forever. It’s perfect for athletics and hiking and spending time on the water.

And likewise you get these wonderfully wet and dark winters which are perfect for life’s other joys: coding, reading, playing video games, boardgames, drinking coffee, etc.

I love places like San Diego / LA but I wouldn’t want to live in a place that is always a perfect summer day.

I was in Seattle Sept-Dec of 2008 on an internship and I remember feeling some of this. Based on what people had said, I was geared up for four months of a soggy, misty mess, but it wasn't that at all— the autumn there was splendid, with tons of breezy, cool days where the sun still shone, with the trees around my place in Madrona showing brilliant colour for weeks on end.

Definitely unpopular opinion.

I love 4 seasons. But the weather and day length make for a difficult half-year from Oct - Mar. The NE corridor has some of these traits, but it was a lot easier to deal with there. In the NE, rain & grey-skies aren't as persistent. In Seattle, a month can go by without seeing the sun.

That's much of the west coast (west of the cascades). I moved from Seattle to the Bay Area, and it's basically the same weather except somewhat shorter summer days and winter nights, WAY more sunshine, and generally about 10f warmer. Except in the summers where these days it seems like Seattle has more 95+ degree days than the peninsula does.

San Diego is months of June Gloom and other Seattle-reminiscent weather, and some sunny days.

Unless you're inland, where it's ninety billion degrees in the shade half the year.

Nice place.

The downside of the historically mild climate is a lot of older homes weren't built with energy efficiency in mind and now in 2025 we have to deal with that inefficiency on our energy bills :'(

I think what's fascinating about it is the daylight changes you experienced in the 20 deg latitude change you experience from Orlando to Seattle are dwarfed by the changes from a ~15 degree latitude change from Seattle to Anchorage. By the time you're getting close to the pole, you can see huge differences in solstice minimum/maximum sunlight by moving just a few hundred miles north or south.

It's the same in the UK vs Southern Europe and Japan where I've lived before. People complain about the wet weather, but it's not that IMO what really gets to you, it's the dark winters with so little daylight compounded with the abundance of cloudy days.

Temperature-wise, most of the UK is actually quite moderate compared to central Europe. It's winter darkness that gets to you.

To put it in perspective, Paris is further north than Seattle.

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