[slm_HN]

At this point Seattle is a fairly crummy city in a fairly nice location. The region and climate are nice but the traffic is hell, the crime is bad and the housing costs are astronomical. The tech salaries are high, but it doesn't make up for the otherwise poor quality of life.

[dpark]

Poor quality of life? I guess my standards are low, because my quality of life here is great.

[Camillo]

Is the climate actually nice? I could not live in a place where it's cloudy most of the year.

[remarkEon]

If you’re considering moving here, think hard about it. It does rain for most of the year, meaning that there’s lots of “green” all over the place (if that’s your thing). Also, in the summers it’s basically 60-70 straight days of 70s and sunny. Not a lot of variety imo.

[aaronbrethorst]

The winters here can be really rough. For me, owning a SAD lamp is pretty much a requirement.

[influx]

Nope, it’s rains here all the time, go to California instead. Much better weather there. :)

[anonymous5133]

Seattle has the highest amount of rainfall per year of any mainland region.

[curtis]

This is just flat out wrong. We do get more cloudy days than any major city in the U.S. but we don't actually get that much heavy rain. This is at least partly offset by the fact that the temperatures are much milder year round. Seattle barely gets any snow in the winter, and rarely gets very hot in the summer.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Climate.

[toweringgoat]

It's far higher than SF at least, in fact I'd say it's higher than most US cities. Plus the traffic is less of an issue with the light-rail expansion (assuming you live close enough to light rail).

But still far lower than most of the rest of the world.

[lackbeard]

I'm pretty sure crime is far lower in Seattle than other large US cities, especially violent crime.

[jotux]

Why speculate when there's data[1].

    City        Violent Crime/100k   Property Crime/100k
    Los Angeles        16                         60
    San Francisco      90                        711
    DC                 79                        672
    Chicago            33                        108
    NYC                7                          18
    Houston            42                        193
    Seattle            88                        808
    Portland           77                        850

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

[todd8]

No, the actual values are quite different. From [1], the same source:

    City        Violent Crime/100k   Property Crime/100k

    Detroit        1759.6                     4093.6
    DC             1202.6                     4516.2
    Houston         966.7                     4397.5
    Chicago         903.8                     2946.3
    San Francisco   776.8                     6138.0
    Boston          706.8                     2316.1
    Los Angeles     634.8                     2359.6
    Seattle         598.7                     5522.0
    NYC             585.8                     1518.7
    Portland        472.8                     5234.8
    Raleigh         392.3                     3063.0
    Austin          372.5                     3771.0

(I added a few cities that are frequently on HN and rearranged them.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b....

[jotux]

You are correct. Unfortunately I can't go back and delete my erroneous post or edit it.

I misinterpreted the "total" column as total events, and divided them by the population. Hopefully people looking at my original post will continue to read down to your reply, and this correction.

[todd8]

Yes, I wondered about the heading labeled "total" as well! It was a bit confusing to be there next to the actual population of the city number. I had recently looked up the NYC crime rate though and I figured out the "total" column was actually the total/100k.

[dawnerd]

People say the same about crime in Portland too and really it's just property theft/drugs.

[rurban]

Plus Portland gets the same amount of rain, as Seattle.