Seattle Rain: Myth or Conspiracy?

According to the See Seattle web site, Seattle's average yearly rainfall is 36.2 inches. Okay, that's more like it! Three feet of rain...I'm picturing needing hip boots just to get to my car in the morning. Unfortunately, the web site goes on to compare this with the rainfall in other areas. Atlanta, for example, has 49 inches of rain on average in a year.

By contrast, the town where I live, Columbus Ohio, gets two more inches of rain each year, on average, than Seattle. How disappointing!

So, it is just a myth? Can all the people who live in Seattle be so mistaken about its average rainfall that they reassure tourists that a sunny day is "unseasonable"?

I suppose this could be the case. It's hard to credit that Seattle's reputation for rain is based on everyone simply not being observant enough to notice if it's raining or not. Wikipedia claims that the reputation is based on a large average number of cloudy days each year (226 days each year ). That makes it a bit more believable...when you see a cloudy day, you think rain is coming. So the infrequent rainy days all blend together with the cloudy days.

What if, though, it wasn't just a myth?

When we stayed in Seattle, we stayed on a hotel right next to route 90 leading out of town. During rush hour, traffic on route 90 was absolutely horrendous (I had a good view, being stuck inside next to a window during the days). Even at three in the morning, traffic was still heavy. I could only imagine that those were people who were just now getting out of town after sitting in rush hour traffic. Seattle seemed like a city that had grown too fast for the highway infrastructure to support.

Could it be that the best solution for Seattle was to invent the myth of rain to keep new people from moving to the city? Seattle has a huge number of other draws going for it. Mount Ranier is beautiful and visible on "unseasonable" days. The Olympic peninsula is a huge natural area in easy driving distance. Leavenworth is a picturesque Bavarian style village in northern Washington state.

With so much drawing new people to the area, can you blame the city for deciding a little bad press might help keep its population down until the infrastructure can be built up?

If you enjoyed this lens, you might also enjoy Who Is Jay Shaffstall?, my lens about myself, which also contains links to other lenses and blogs I've written.