The Pacific North West of the United States and Canada. A wonderland of nature. Epic scenery – breath-taking mountains, endless forests, windswept beaches, even volcanoes. And the amazing cities of Vancouver, Seattle and Portland that have influenced the wider world far beyond their isolated patch along the wild Pacific coast.
And… it is somewhat well known for its weather too. Dominated by wet winter westerlies blowing in from the Pacific each year, its exposed coasts feature some of the highest rainfall in the world, and sport temperate rainforests.
In the first of my Climate Casebook series, I look at the curious case of the Pacific NW Climate. Is it Oceanic like Britain? Or is it more like a Mediterranean climate with its dry summers?
The wet winters of the Pacific NW are pretty well known. It’s also fairly well known that Vancouver has the mildest of all winters out of all the Canadian cities. But much fewer people know about the summers in this area. Compared to the dodgy summers of Britain (which also faces west to an ocean at a similar latitude), Pacific NW summers are consistently glorious affairs. Low rainfall and high sunshine hours are the norm.
The Pacific NW climate is actually a hybrid of the classic Mediterranean hot dry summers / wet winters pattern, and the Oceanic mild summers and rain all year round. It has very similar winter and summer temperatures to England, but it has the wet winter and dry summer patterns of California. Oceanic temperatures meets Mediterranean rainfall patterns.
This video shows the beauty of this region and its cities with climate data and animations which fully demonstrate how this region has one of the rarer, more interesting and unexpected climate types in the world.
