Born-and-raised Portlanders often shrug off the drizzle. Newcomers sometimes spiral into seasonal depression. Who's right about how bad the Portland winter actually is?
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Add your commentIt's not the rain. It's the GRAY. Rain you can work with. 8 months of flat gray sky that never moves or changes or does anything is a specific psychological experience that no amount of 'just get a SAD lamp' fixes.
The fact that Portland gets like 36 inches of rain per year but Seattle gets 38 and Chicago gets 36 and nobody calls those cities rainy is genuinely under-discussed. We just spread ours over more days. 150 days of drizzle feels wetter than 40 days of actual downpours even if the numbers are similar.
Oregonians who sneer at newcomers complaining about rain need to stop. It IS dark here. It IS wet. Pretending you're tougher because you were born tolerating something isn't a personality.
My therapist has a three-month waiting list starting every October. Take from that what you will.
I grew up here and I genuinely did not understand what people were talking about until I lived in Tucson for two years and came back. You don't know what you're adapted to until you aren't anymore.
We had a week of sun in October and I watched my neighborhood transform. People were outside, talking to each other, gardening, playing with kids. Then it clouded over and everyone went back inside for six months. That's real. That affects communities.
Came from Miami. Thought I was mentally prepared. Was absolutely not mentally prepared. Went back after 14 months. No shame. Biologically I am a sunshine creature.
November through February is genuinely rough. March starts getting better. By May it's paradise. The problem is the people who moved here for a May Portland and got surprised by a January Portland.
The people who 'love the rain' are the same people who disappear from all social activity from Halloween to St. Patrick's Day. I see you.
The actual problem is we don't have the indoor culture infrastructure to compensate. Houston is also miserable outside 4 months a year but they have world-class museums, huge malls, bowling, anything. Portland has... breweries. Great breweries. But you can only do that so many times a week.
Hot take: the rain is Portland's natural newcomer filter and the city is quietly fine with that. Less competition for brunch reservations in January.
i have lived here my whole life (38 years) and i take vitamin D and have a light therapy lamp and go to the gym all winter and im fine. it requires active management. people who dont manage it and then blame the city are making a choice.
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