nanabee--Born and raised here...and I do not own an umbrella, lol! DH has one still from college that we joke about. I think we keep it more as a joke. Yes, the rain doesn't stop us from doing anything. Some things are even better in the rain...like walking or running, IMO. Yeah, I know...not everyone would agree, lol!

The Rogue Valley is still the place that best fits your criteria.
Plus, we have sunny days and sometimes rain in the Winter. I'd go nuts up North.
http://www.ashlandchamber.com/index.asp
http://www.jacksonvilleoregon.org/geography.html
http://www.southernoregon.org/regions/valley.html

hi mms:
A year ago I was visiting Portland, and it was raining - I looked across the street and the neighbor was washing his car!! He didn't seem to notice the rain either! LOL

nanabee, LOL..the washing the car story sounds SO Portland!!
And yes, one day I met mms for lunch and it was drizzly and I carried my umbrella..we had to walk a few blocks..she did not carry one..I put mine away, I wanted to be just like her :D
I rarely carried it after that lol..didn't want to be mistaken for an out of towner lol.

Rain shmain..if you like the place, you will want to live there regardless of some rain.
We lived in Florida for one and a half years..there were 5 hurricanes the first year..we moved.

A little rain is nuthin!

Seattle earthquake of 2001. Magnitude 6.8. Where do you think those mountains come from?

Kennedy3,

My daughter and her family relocated from Atlanta to Bainbridge Island Wa. little over a year ago. My son-in-law was wanted by three schools. He chose U.WA because they liked Bainbridge so much. Good schools, many green spaces, a real village, about 22,000 people (?). He rides his bike onto the ferry and then up to school. I also relocated and my son and I love it here. We are close to the big city if we wish to go but very happy right here. I got to see an old fashioned 4th of July parade. Everybody was in it or watching it. My 11 year old granddaughter and friends walk for ice cream or shopping. So far I like the weather compared to St. Simons Isl, Ga. I hated the heat. Here I did get a little tired of mostly overcast skies last Nov.

Give it some thought. Oh, it is expensive but you could find a very nice house in your price range. The closer to the ferry and village, the more expensive.

Good Luck

LOL Scarlett. Do you really want to be like me? :D

Todays weather here has been pretty much everything. Light rain, then dry with blinding sun, then partly cloudy, then downpours, then more blinding sun, and now hail. All of this is in the past 2 hours. So don't worry about weather. If there is something you don't like, just wait a few minutes and it will change.

LoL Scarlett - the "real" Portlanders do put us to shame!

Bookmarking

Andrew said;
As I've said and no one seems to get: it's not the RAIN that bothers people in the NW, it's the number of overcast, gloomy days, on which it may or may not rain.

I always get a kick out of how the marketing department of Anytown, USA (or World) twists their numbers to sound good.

When I was in Seattle, we went on a tour and one of their favorite stats was that they actually get less rain than NYC in a year. Personally, I'd rather have a 1/2 inch of rain in 3 or 4 hours and sun the rest of the week than drizzle and clouds for a week straight totaling 1/2 an inch.

Similarly, when I was in Reykjavik, they stated their city's winter is actually warmer than NYC. They didn't bother mentioning it's dark for 3 months straight.

Why the flap?

"Portland, Ore., would fit. Nice scenery. Nowhere near as rainy as Seattle." --Andrew

BarryK---the reason they didn't "bother" to mention the 3 months of winter darkness in Reykjavik is because it doesn't happen. Reykjavik is at latitude 64 degrees 10, nearly the same as Fairbanks, Alaska (64 degrees 50). Even on the shortest day of winter, the sun is up for almost four hours, and the daylight is longer than that. There is no constant darkness at that latitude.

And it is true that we get less rain here in Seattle than New York. If they didn't mention the cloudy days on your tour, that may be because those are hard to count. Does a day like yesterday, which was half sunny and gorgeous, then clouded up, count as a sunny day or a cloudy one?

I live in Conifer just south of Evergreen Colorado in the foothills of Denver. We got much precip this year which is generally normal unless we are in a drought. Yes, there is low humidity...but I wouldnt consider it "high desert".

enzian - I've been to Reykjavik 3 times. It may not be pitch black all winter, but your sun up is still pretty dark as it's just above the horizon for those 4 hours.

Similarly, in the summer, even though the sun sets for a few hours, it doesn't get dark, just dusky.

Not even dusky, actually; it is light enough all night to read a book, go for a hike, play baseball, or whatever you want. I lived at that latitude for 9 years (but not in Reykjavik) and we did all of that. And on the shortest winter days, although the sun was low, it was still full daylight (reflecting off all the snow helps). Much brighter that it is here in Seattle today.

Here is a great site for comparing annual average weather conditions in two cities. In this case, precipitation in Seattle and Portland: http://www.weather.com/outlook/event...ocid2=USOR0275

OK, I take back what I wrote about Portland being less rainy than Seattle. It just seemed that way when I lived there. Either way, the rain wasn't that bad, and the sun usually came out for a while on those days. Also, it didn't snow as much as in other areas I've lived or get as cold.

Funny. Reading down the list, a whole lot of people chose my top two as their top two.

Boulder, CO and Portland, OR.

Wouldn't bother looking anywhere else. :)hahaha

PS Nanabee... Austin may be a lovely city...but it ain't got 4 seasons. Like much of Texas, it has two seasons.

Summer runs from March 1st thru November 30th. Winter runs from 12/1-2/28. :) And there generally isn't any snow involved in Austin's "winters". :)

Santa Barbara would be one of my favorites.Paul

What 4 seasons are in Santa Barbara?

Being Canadian, looking at the USA objectively and having visited roughly 30 states, I can say that if I had to move, I would move to Seattle. I love it there - west coast lifestyle, good sized city with attributes and a great climate - rain never hurt anyone, in fact it's essential to life on earth, and Seattle is cleaner, greener and happier because of it.

Kennedy3,

Try Hutchinson Kansas. It is only 50 min. from Wichita. It has beautiful golf courses and is within an hour and a half of several lakes. The spring is great, the summers though, are hot. Fall is nice and winter does have snow.

Hutchinson has about 40,000 people and has many local attractions. It has the Kansas Cosmosphere and the Underground Salt Museum (which takes you 650' underground :-))

As for schools, there are several are choices. Hutchinson High School (which has won 6A State Boys Football the last four years), Buhler High School, Nickerson High School, and many other local schools.

The nearest airport is Wichita ICT-about 50 minutes away. It offers nonstop to Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, L.A., Dallas, Houston, Denver, etc.

In Hutchinson, $800,000 for a home will get you quite a bit. Again, there are several are golf courses that you could build on or around. One would be Prarie Dunes Country Club. The Dunes has hosted the Women's and Senior's Open.

Hutchinson has all that you need for shopping. It has several grocery stores (Wal-Mart Supercenter too!) and a Mall that has such stores as JCPenney, Sears, Dillards, etc.

Come try Hutchinson out!

The only thing I'd be wary of is when people say they love their town because it has four seasons, that usually means winter lasts nine months.

People with great weather, as in San Diego, say that they have year around perfect weather.

Learn to read between the lines.

I doubt the original poster still wants info, but I can't resist responding. Spokane, Washington is a closer fit to the stated requirements than any other place mentioned so far, in my prejudiced opinion. Spokane is on the drier, east side of Washington state, but is not in the near-desert SE corner of the state; it is in the central to north part of the east side, which is one of the most beautiful areas of the entire U.S. Four distinct seasons, low humidity, probably a bit hotter in the summer than the poster wanted, green landscape - not as lush/soggy (depending on your point of view) as the Seattle/Portland area - but many, many more days of gorgeous sunny skies. Green scenery, forests, lakes, rivers, streams, mountains, hills, not far from rolling wheat fields - an outdoor person's dream. An international airport right outside of town. Population of the metropolitan area - about 400,000+ (big enough for Broadway touring shows.) Great health care. Several colleges/universities. Half an hour from beautiful Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (another place worth looking into.) Rarely does a day pass that I am not grateful to live in the best part of the country (best = beautiful landscape, green, sunny, four seasons, low humidity.)

The poster who said that it isn't the amount of rain, it's the number of days with mostly overcast skies, was absolutely correct. I've lived near Seattle and Portland, love them both, they are fabulous cities (other than Seattle's traffic), but the overcast skies do bother me. Spokane is about 4.5 hours from Seattle, and maybe 6 from Portland.

My only comment was that after a week in Spokane, I felt that I was a very long way from anywhere.

Please do not move to Missoula, Mt- the moutain sides are full enough.

Portland and Seattle both have another problem beyond dark winters: TRAFFIC! The traffic in those cities is so horrible that in makes them unattractive places to live. What's the point of moving to a place where you're confined to your neighborhood unless you want to join the fray on the highways and battle for an hour or two getting to your destination. Unfortunately, there's no solution in the cards for either city.

I like the suggestion of Bainbridge Island, which is just across the bay from Seattle. You can live in a quieter, island environment (with a few traffic problems of its own) and take the ferry to downtown Seattle for all that the city offers. It's just a 1/2 hour ferry ride, and you can leave your car at home.

Another possibility is Bremerton, which is about an hour's ferry ride from Seattle. It's growing, but offers cheaper home prices and a bit less congestion. Great golf courses too!

I've been gone from Portland for a few years, I've seen far worse traffic in other cities. Rush hour was bad, but you knew when it would start and where things would back up. Unless there was an accident, I never hit any traffic during non-rush hours -- unlike, say, New York or L.A.