TL;DR: Yup!
But but but… look, I’m not going to try to convince anyone that it’s somehow not “that” wet here. It is. It rains regularly, most days, from what feels like October through May. Maybe that’s more like November through June. It kind of changes, and some years, November and even December is not that wet. Jan-April definitely feel like the thick of it.
I’m purposefully not referencing data here because you can do that easily enough without reading a blog post. I’m here to try to give some human perspective to how it “feels”. I could say, for example, “it feels like it rains non-stop from November through May.” To which you could reply, “according to the weather data, out of a possible 210 days in that time span, precipitation was only recorded on 150 days.” Again, I am not referencing real data. I’m just saying. It is not really what we are thinking about when we are (literally) boots on the ground experiencing the lifestyle.
Here’s what I’d say:
1 – You almost never need an umbrella. I never use mine. Maybe once when my aunt came to visit.
2 – You need good gear – boots, raincoat and more! There are three essential items everyone needs to live in the pacific Northwest, and a bunch more that are super nice to have.
3 – The prize for enduring months of endless rain is a long, hot, gorgeous summer, that fills your garden with flowers, tomatoes, and berries, and offers you unending options for summer days at the beach, or lake, or river. Oh and it’s not humid like the east coast. It’s not humid at all!
4 – It never gets nearly as frigid as New York. Not even close. And hardly any snow in town (although when the snow does come, Portland and Vancouver can’t cope the way NYC does).
So there you have it. It’s dreary here a lot of the time, but it’s not usually long periods of heavy rain, and so you can still go outside and enjoy life with the right outdoor gear; plus you get a long glorious summer (with no humidity) and you don’t have to endure the bone-chilling cold of the sub-zero wind chills of say, the Upper West Side (love you so much tho!) while walking your dog on a Tuesday night in February.
