@surreal1272 The actual rainfall in Seattle (and Portland) on an annualized basis is less than that of most cities in the East, including Atlanta, for example. I've lived in both and, in Seattle, it's an ongoing thing, but it rarely comes pouring down. Eastern cities are more apt to get thunderstorms where it comes down in buckets, so that probably explains why they get more when annualized. I would sometimes watch heavy rain in Atlanta send so much damn red clay down the sides of residential streets.
I did okay with the rain. It gave me an excuse to get coffee and/or read. It didn't put me in a bad mood. I will say that that corner of the country is reputed to have some very uptight people and I would concur with that. Many California and East Coast transplants commiserated about this ... and befriended each other. The Univ. of Wash. psych. and soc. departments have faculty and researchers who study these social phenomena and write about them.
@Robert Hall Good call on your "what if" scenario, except that it is so expensive in the PacNW right now. It's interesting how, when Boeing was not doing well in the late '60s and early '70s, some people funded a billboard on I-5 southbound saying 'Will the last person leaving Seattle turn off the lights?' or something like that. People would also call the Univ. of Wash. "the U," which was sort of small townish. Nobody has called it that for at least 2 decades!
I will say that any place where the predominant tree cover is evergreen makes for a more pleasant environment than one that is deciduous. That's why, to me, at least, Maine looks nicer than Southern New England and Duluth and the UP of MI look nicer than the Twin Cities, so it makes for a nicer place to be day in and day out. The Atlanta area also looked nice because of the ubiquitous stands of Southern pine. My parents came to visit me there once and took the Delta "red eye" from SoCal, never having been in that corner of the U.S., and were mostly impressed.