Happy Easter!

These are some pictures from the weekend that I spent with my family. We went to the botanical gardens at the Ballard Locks, the Skavit Valley Tulip Festival and Sky City Restaurant at the Space Needle.

I know, talking about the weather is cliche but....

It's one of those days here: rainy when I go into work, rainy when I leave work. The only enjoyable thing is sitting in my window and watching other people out in the rain while I'm finally inside and dry. I know every person who moves here complains about the weather; it's inevitable that we all whine. However, my point is not that the weather sucks (because sometimes it doesn't) it's that every time I start to complain about a particularly vicious spat of wind or cold or hail, I get the same response from the people who grew up here:

"The weather is NEVER like this."

One day, after hearing this phrase yet again, I happened to mention it to a fellow transplant.  Turns out, she'd heard the same thing from other people! The more I asked around, the more I found that different variations of this phrase show up whenever a transplant is nearby talking about the climate.

Being the analytic that I am, I have deduced the following: bad weather in Seattle is not normal. I don't know what we did when we moved to this region but obviously our presence here has turned Mother Nature against us. In light of this revelation, I suggest that next time you are confronted with bad weather and the phrase, you go ahead and make the necessary mea culpa and try to move on with your day. It won’t be easy but obviously, if you just wait it out, you’ll never again see a drop of snow in the lowlands.

Right…. So now that we’ve pacified the natives, let’s talk seriously.

Since I have officially made it through my third Seattle winter, I want to ask the question, "What is normal weather for Seattle?"

According to the City of Seattle website’s visitors guide (http://www.cityofseattle.net/html/visitor/weather.htm), “On average, it rains in Seattle at least 50% of the time, with the heaviest rain periods between January and May and between October and December. June, July and August are our driest and warmest months.” So basically, they’re saying it rains from October to May.

From my experience, in the fall, wind storms are pretty common. They just vary on how much damage they cause but we lose power often. It seems fairly normal in the winter for it to snow in the lowlands a few times though it’s rather rare for it to stick for any real amount of time. However, when it does, there’s major havoc. If it’s not snowing, it’s raining pretty constantly and the cloud cover is thick. It never fails that the beginning of spring is still cold and rainy (especially Easter) but we get longer periods of warmer temperatures. This is pretty cruel due to the fact that it almost always reverts back to bone chilling cold. Not fair.

However, summer, is the most beautiful time of the year. It stays light until all hours and it’s warm and breezy. The jury’s still out as to whether last year’s freak heat wave (topping out at 104 degrees I believe for multiple days) will be a repetitive event but I’m hoping, for the sake of everyone who only has heat, that it was a one time thing.

So there’s my take on it. I am not going to pretend to know what’s normal around here. I’m sure that we’ll continue to see random weather events. People will say they’ll never happen again…but they will. You might as well get used to it.