Something that’s been coming up a lot as we talk to au pairs is the climate and geography of the Seattle area.  This topic is not typically initiated with the prospective au pair saying, “I’ve always heard how wonderful the weather is in Seattle…”  Kind of the opposite, actually.  In fact, with one girl who just asked to be released from our queue, she said that the weather of Seattle was actually a topic in her English textbooks.  Seriously?  The German primary school system is actually educating Au Pairs to reject our area of the country?  Not cool.

The stereotype is, of course, that it rains in Seattle.  One might even say it rains a lot.  And if it isn’t raining, it’s cloudy (hence all the vampires).  Presumably when it’s not overcast, the sun heats the volcanoes causing them to erupt, or triggers an earthquake.  It’s also always a risk that a prolonged outbreak of good weather would cause Canada to invade.  There must be some reason they’ve amassed 90% of their population within 100 miles of the border, after all.

Which is exactly what people are supposed to think.  If you’ve ever lived in the area (or worse, moved here), if you learn nothing else, you’ll learn how much Seattle people want Californians to stay in California.  California is, of course, the perfect place to live (having spent a year and a half, even writing that sentence made me want to throw up a little).  It is so perfect, in fact, that perhaps the Californians should stay there?  The smog, the oppressive heat, the overwhelming crowd of humanity, the traffic, the prices, the taxes, the wildfires, the earthquakes, the searing sun, the lack of seasons – these are all PERFECT, if not in reality than by definition, and exactly what any right-minded Californian should be looking for in life.

For non-Californians, though, Seattle’s weather is not only “not too bad”, but actually rather nice.  There’s a reason why Seattlites aren’t running off to California in droves, after all.  Yes, it rains here.  But it rains less here than on most of the East coast or in the Midwest, when measured by actual rainfall.  The summers are spectacular – usually with 4 months of near-cloudless skies, clean, clear air, and warm but-not-too-hot temperatures.  The Winters are mild, with an occasional snow (which shuts down the city because, hey, why not?  And if you’ve ever seen a Seattle driver in the snow, you can readily understand the “why”) but with temperatures that rarely dip below freezing.   You have pretty much every type of geography imaginable, and can go from ocean to rain forest to mountain to desert all in one day, if you’re of a mind.  You have Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, all within a few hours of each other.

Though to keep Californian’s from buying out every affordable home in the entire Pacific Northwest, there must be some compromise, and there is.  While it doesn’t rain as much as people think, it does rain more often.  And even when it’s not raining, it’s often thinking about it, with the clouds to prove it.  The rain that does fall is usually a soft drizzle, the sort that makes an umbrella a waste of time.  The plus side is that even on rainy days you can still head out for a walk without too much concern.  Having grown up with Michigan winters, I can say that at least personally I’d rather go for a walk where I might get a bit damp, then go on a walk where the wind HURTS and I might come back with frostbite (and no, no, I’m not trying to whine about Michigan – Michigan’s climate has its upsides, too, but I’ll take Seattle winters any year).  The downside is that if you want to wait for a dry day, you might be waiting a while.  And also, it’s resulted in the need to define the term “sunbreak”, to denote those moments when the clouds suddenly part and the deep-blue sky shows through, and sunlight makes the wet pavement steam.  But as its name implies, sunbreaks are fleeting.

So I don’t know.  I mean, I can understand why certain people don’t like the climate.  The days can get short, and the lack of sunshine some days isn’t the most cheerful of things.  On the other hand, for a year or two, I would think the Puget Sound would be an awesome place to hang out and explore.  Oh well, to each their own.

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