Seattle is a wonderful town. I've been living here since 1978. I think it's better than anywhere else I've ever lived. And I can't think of anywhere else in this country that I'd like to live.
"What ho!" you cry. "Let's pack the bags and move there, too!"
Not bad! Always glad to have another batch of nice people here in town, particularly if you drink coffee. But before you pack the kids and mail the cats up here, there are a few things that you really need to consider.
Note: The following opinions are just that: opinions. They may be very true but they're just my opinions. As such, they are sold by weight and not by volume. Your mileage may vary.
The Weather (or, "Does it really rain all the time in Seattle?") In actual fact, it doesn't rain all the time in Seattle. (It rains just about all the time some 60-80 miles to the west of here in the Olympic Rain Forest, but you probably aren't going to be living there.) Seattle only gets 30-40 inches of rain a year. But let's take a closer look at how this happens.
According to the U.S. Weather Service, Seattle gets 240 totally overcast days a year (that's 2 out of 3), 62 partially overcast days a year (when the sun might deign to appear for five minutes), and 63 clear days a year. In other words, there are about 2 months a year that are really bright and sunny. We use them up in July and August, when we can make the most money off of the tourists. But along about September 15th, the clouds roll in--a big, dark gray blanket--and you don't get to see the sun for... oh... four or five months sometime. (Mind you, I like it like this. I like it cold and wet and rainy and damp. It's why I live here. I don't live in Arizona anymore in large part because I hated the heat and the dryness. But this isn't going to be easy to get used to if you come from almost anywhere else. And it's worth noting that the single biggest danger when doing outdoor sports in this state is hypothermia.)
Let me put it another way: in any other part of the country, if I were standing at the window and you asked me "Is it raining?" I would answer "Yes" or "No," as the mood took me. In Seattle, however, this question can oft be the start of a five-minute discussion on the size, shape, color, texture, frequency, temperature, and density of the precipitation... at the end of which time, the weather will have changed to something else. There are at least 131 words to describe each type of rainfall--there used to be a popular postcard sold here in town that listed them. Be warned.
Life in the Dark Seattle's at about the same latitude as London. We're farther north than the northern tip of Maine. We have summer days that start getting light at 5:00 am and last until 10:00 at night. This is glorious, particularly when you're out on the water fishing or just sailing around. But we also have winters that are, well, dark. The sun rises at 8:00 am or so and sets at 4:30 pm, which means that for about 3 weeks on either side of the winter solstice, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. If you don't have windows in your office, you'll live by electric lights for all that time. Even if you do have windows in your office, you won't really see the sun; you'll just see grey clouds above you.
All of which brings me to Seasonal Affective Disorder, an amazing condition brought about by not enough natural light. It's basically a phototropic condition that causes you to start getting draggy, droopy, and depressed in midwinter when you don't get the sun. It's highly unpleasant if you're prone to it. And SAD is a lot like claustrophobia: you won't know that you're prone to it until the problem smacks you right in the face.
Housing You know, I honestly thought that Seattle had good housing until I recently took a trip to San Francisco with my sweetheart. We were looking at a paper to see what housing prices were like and... Well, did you know that you can pay less for a house in the suburbs of San Francisco than you can in Seattle these days? Oh, not much, I grant you, but the housing prices are clearly about to boom again in Seattle. It's actually cheaper to buy a house in the Bay Area. Who'd-a thunk it?
Slugs Slugs are a thing worthy of their own topic. The slugs here average 4-6 inches long and are endemic. They are the single biggest gardening pest up here. They come in many colors and patterns: black, brown, leopard (brown with black spots), and the culturally popular but actually less common banana slug, which is a purulent yellow-tan color. There are snails, too, but they're not half as bad (nor are they as ucky if you're upset by small, phlegmlike creatures).
Allergies As one who suffers a little on this end, I was encouraged by several readers to include a section on allergies. Because we have so much moisture and so many growing things up here, Seattle sets records for its pollens, molds, and mildews. As a matter of fact, mold is a problem that will not just affect allergy sufferers, it is a problem that can and does affect things in your house. Nowhere outside of Florida have I heard of any place in the US that suffers from so much mold and mildew.
Jobs The job market is doing reasonably well here in Seattle for writers and technical communicators of all stripes. Check out the professional links page for links for information on places to send your resume or apply directly.
Xenophobia If you're moving here from California, be sure not to tell anyone about where you're from, change your license plates immediately, and see if you can't find a relative somewhere in Washington State to emphasize as the connection to the state. I'm not kidding about this: Californians are actively disliked by many Washingtonians (and Oregonians, too; Oregon invented the phrase "Don't Californicate Oregon"). The reason you should change your license plates is that they're magnets for tickets. This prejudice is much more sharply evinced towards Southern Californians than Northern Californians. You draw your own conclusions; I'm just reporting a fact here. The Seattle Times had a great feature article on this about 10 years ago, something you may want to look up if you're in need of supporting data. A cartoon was published in this state that showed a car with California plates crossing the border and seeing a sign that said "Entering Washington. Don't do it too often."
Traffic The traffic in this city has gotten to be very bad in the last 5-8 years. The freeway system is now running at more than 100% of capacity, which means that gridlock and tailbacks are far too frequent for my taste. And when there's a sporting event going on downtown (Opinion: Seattle will one day have major league football and baseball teams, but we haven't got 'em yet), you can kiss off getting anywhere for an additional half hour. Thanks to extraordinary dealmaking, we're now tearing down a functional stadium and building two new stadiums for these aforementioned pissant teams at a cost of about 1 billion dollars. (I still wonder who got paid off....) Well, the Mariners can lose in an expensive stadium as well as a cheaper old one, I guess.
So... Seattle's a town that usually takes about two years to get the hang of. As Garrison Keillor once observed, he can't move here as much as he likes it, because he thinks that he'd end up becoming a better person than he is now. I've lived here half my life. The coffee here is better than anywhere else in the world. The scenery is great (when you can see it, mind you, but it's there often enough.) We have aurora borealis when the sunspot cycle's at a peak (like now and the next 2-3 years). There's everything you could want to try here in the way of exotic cuisines, even if my favorite Ethiopian restaurant has closed. The sushi here is better than anywhere else on the mainland.
All in all, despite her volcanoes and her various faults (researchers just discovered a new one in February under the Puget Sound that's building up a lot of steam), Seattle is a lovely place to live, but it's not for everybody. But if you like rain and cold and wet as much as I do, then Seattle may well be the place for you.
As long as you're not from California.
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