I ran into Marion on the bus. She said, “You’ve moved. Where’d you go?” and I replied, “To the Nehalem Valley, where it’s warmer.” She said, “Good for you.” Having enjoyed going to college in Colorado where it’s sunny just about year ’round, she readily understood my desire to get out of the fog. A commercial fisherman’s wife, Marion reads the weather, is tuned into wind and fog, fair weather and foul.

A lot of people now are so insulated from weather, they haven’t learned its habits. Going from house to car to work indoors to car to house means people don’t experience weather. Unlike commercial fishermen, landscapers, utility linemen or gardeners for that matter, they don’t notice the southeast wind that precedes an oncoming storm, or the temperature drop that occurs sometimes only minutes before the first raindrops.

When people tell me they’re thinking about moving to the coast, usually their first concern is the weather – knowing there’s great natural beauty and fabulous air quality but wondering if they can handle the tremendous load of precipitation. Depending on how much I like the person, I tell them all or only part of the following:

Yes, it rains a lot on the southwest Washington and northwest Oregon coasts; you can count on about 85 inches a year. (Gasp!) But it comes in downpours, followed by breaks. (Quizzical look.) It’ll rain three inches in 24 hours then clear for a day and a half. (Oh, that sounds better.)

I go on to tell them the worst month is November with the highest precipitation, its dreariness compounded by the waning light as the season moves toward winter solstice, when the sun (from our earthly perspective) is the furthest from our northern hemisphere. Then, almost like magic on December 22 the days lengthen by minutes and whether our intellect notices or not, our body clock does. It doesn’t hurt a bit that holiday festivity focuses our attention on friends and family at the lowest point in the annual light cycle.

When I really like the person, I advise a two or three week sun break in a drier, sunnier climate especially in November when that high quantity rainfall and darkening days can lead to winter doldrums or worse, seasonal affective disorder – getting downright depressed. When you take a break in November the rest of the winter seems to fly by.

Our coastal weather during summer is dominated by northwest winds typically blowing around 20 mph. A combination of cool ocean water and interior temperatures above 80 degrees produces onshore fog that hangs along the coast like overcast. If there’s a headland to the north, that coastal fog is dissipated in the lee of the south-facing slope.

The Peninsula, especially the Long Beach/Ilwaco end, has some particularly difficult conditions: No headland or even a puny ridge protects it from summer’s steady northwest wind and resultant wind-chill and fog. The Columbia River adds to the problem; like a four-mile wide straw, it sucks summer’s coastal fog almost to Longview before burning off. In winter, the River’s corridor funnels cold continental wind down from eastern Washington, bringing frigid air to our usually temperate winters.

So, we’ve moved a mere 45 miles south on the Oregon coast, where the winter light cycle and 85 inches of precipitation are basically the same. What’s up? We’re in a different microclimate. One microclimate that attracts California retirees is the “banana belt” on the southern Oregon coast, Gold Beach to Brookings. Climate maps in the “Sunset Western Garden Book” show that narrow swath of Oregon coast with high and low temperatures and precipitation duplicating the zone 17 climate of the San Francisco Bay area.

The microclimate we’ve moved to is protected not from winter rain, but from wind pushing summer fog onshore. Mountains stretching from Saddle Mountain on the east to Neahkahnie on the west deflect the wind so that there’s a hole in the fog ten miles in diameter. Instead of a windbreaker and long cotton pants most of the summer, I can now work outdoors in shorts and a T-shirt.

The same dynamic that creates this fine summer weather, however, has its winter downside: colder nights and a higher chance of frost or snow. The Pacific, our big thermal sink which makes our coastal weather more temperate, is six miles away so its moderating effects aren’t as pronounced as right on the beach.

Where’s this spot? I’ll let you study maps and figure it out.

Victoria Stoppiello is a free ance writer who still enjoys coastal weather after 20 years of enduring it.