Sunshine all the time makes a desert.
~Arabian proverb
People who know me know I like sunshine. A lot. And so they keep telling me that I’m going to hate it in the Seattle area where it rains all the time and is cloudy all the time if we end up moving there. No one believes me when I say southwest Michigan and Seattle are about the same in terms of rain and sunny days.
For example, according to World Facts and Figures, the number of completely sunny days in Seattle is 58. The number in Grand Rapids, Michigan? 64. A big whopping six days.
According to Yahoo! neighborhood profiles, Seattle averages 152 sunny days (I believe this is days with sun versus the WFF that is completely sunny days), 155 precipitation days, 36 inches of rain and 11 inches of snow a year. Compare that to where I’m living in southwest Michigan and it’s 159 sunny days (seven more), 130 precipitation days (25 less), 35 inches of rain (one inch less) and 65 inches of snow (54 more inches!).
So, according to the data, the days with sun are practically the same between Seattle and SW Michigan and the amount of rain is the same in both places. Yes, Seattle has more precipitation days, but in Michigan, we get a heck of a lot more snow! And according to weather.com, Kalamazoo averages a heck of a lot more rain in the summer than Seattle does. I’ll take dry nice summers and cooler rainy winters over wet summers and snowy winters.
So I don’t think it’ll be that bad. Plus, there will be mountains surrounding me no matter where I look. Beautiful.
