Sense of Place

"Wet winters and relatively dry summers characterize much of the Pacific Northwest, just the reverse of the weather pattern of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. People in Portland and Seattle must water their lawns during the summer, and August is a time of forest-fire danger. The relationship between temperature on land and sea explains this phenomenon: during winter the land is cooler than the sea; during summer the reverse is true. Summertime air increases in temperature as it moves from sea to land and is thus able to retain more of the moisture it collected from the Pacific."

--from The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History, by Carlos A. Schwantes (University of Nebraska Press, 1989)