The Blue Hole

The area where I live is known as The Blue Hole. This is because it is in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains in Washington State.
Because of the prevailing wind patterns, we get little rain here. The average is 16 inches a year. The weather pattern comes in from the southwest bringing a lot of moist tropical weather with it. The clouds run into the Olympic Mountains which cause them to pile up against them and the squeeze the clouds, causing them to dump their moisture. You can travel 100 miles from here, and land in Forks, Washington where the average is 100 inches a year..
If you rravel just a short distance,to say Port Angeles. a distance of 15 miles the annual precipitation goes up to 20 inches., similar if you reavel east to Port Townsend.
This is one of the primary reasons we chose to move here when we retired. The same mild climate as Seattle, but without all the rain.
As with all plans, there were a couple of things I did not take into account.
Mainly the temperature. For some reason it did not occur to me that blue skies in winter equates to cold. The cloud cover keeps it warn, the clouds a blanket to keep us warm.
So the difference isn't enough to make for a completely different environment, but the winter temperatures average  couple of degrees cooler.
It doesn't particularly bother me, as I have lots of hobbies to keep me busy. Nothing like sitting down with a good book in the living room with a toasty fire in the wood stove.