Anyone familiar with the area? Is it a family place to live? Still wanting to escape this cold.

Ellen

If you dislike cold then Spokane is definately not the place to move to. It's very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter plus it's miles and miles from civilization. It is also in the heart of the red part of the state so if you're blue in your philosophical leanings you'll be a fish out of water there.
If your looking for a more temperate climate try somewhere on the coast. Vancouver I've heard is nice and very close to Portland and there is always the Greater Puget Sound area, which though quite damp at times rarely gets below freezing in the winter nor above 90 in the summer

Want to escape the cold??

Stay out of the North West!

San Diego is the most perfect weather in the US...No Humidity...never cold (today is a 'cold' day here it's in the 60's)...never too hot...no bugs...Pacific ocean breezes...320 days of sunshine a year (NO HUMIDITY!)...low crime...gorgeous scenery both coastal and inland..theme parks and zoos and a huge beautiful park you can walk through at Midnight with 18 (!) major museums...Sea World...Disney/Universal/Six Flags/Hollywood up the road...Surfing beaches and Towns...trips to Mexico? Just walk across! TONS of Live Theater...Major League Sports...Politics, neither Red nor Blue...Gorgeous city and downtown with beautiful smaller towns all over the place outside city limits...world famous Spas...The Comic-Con every year in July...fabulous shopping...un crowded freeways and roads (except one spot during drive time)...the $5 water taxi that takes you any where you want to go around the bay...great food...

Having lived in many places in the US and Alaska...nothing compares.

All of the above is absolutely true...Come on down!


Doug

Minus the cost of living in San Diego...and the people that don't speak english....

I vouch for everything Xmosis said...San Diego weather is the best in the nation (that's a fact). That is, if you like sunshine...

People that don't speak English? Most of them are learning English and/or are bi-lingual...I have no negatives to add over that...personaly all those I've run into are fine folks...of course as anywhere it depends on how you treat others. I choose to be polite and have fun and I get that back every time.

Cost of living...well...I guess...rent is high but food is reasonable with all the competition. Gasoline is off the map though.

That's the thing--I would love san diego--BUT $$$$ for housing. My house might could sell for $160 here (UPSTATE NY) but there??? One fifth a house!
How do people live there?

PAYNE
>>It is also in the heart of the red part of the state so if you're blue in your philosophical leanings you'll be a fish out of water there.
>>
What does this mean exactly? Conservative...red...
Ellen

PS) I don't mind the heat.

How cold is cold? I live near Spokane. It is a nice place. Just about anything you'd need in a city is there (except for a magic shop). It's too much of a big city for my tastes, but it would be a smallish city by most standards.

So, to your cold question, I don't think Spokane is as cold as upstate NY, but you will see snow. (We would consider 20s to be cold, 10s to be very cold, and less than 10 to be bitter cold that happens rarely, all temps farenheit.)

Payne says it's cold, but those of us inland think everyone in Seattle is a wimp.

In the summer, it'll get into the upper 90s, but without the northeast humidity.

Cost of living is pretty reasonable.

Spokane itself isn't much, scenically, but the surrounding areas are stunningly gorgeous.

Any other questions, just ask!

Geoff, more or less local to Spokane

Looking at the Weather channel website it appears that Spokane is actually colder (and hotter than upstate New York so it appears that there wouldn't be any advantage in moving clear across the country to experience worse weather.
As for the red comment, you were correct I was referring to the Red State Blue State topic that has been dominating out media for the last month. Spokane is a large city in population only and (at least in my experience) suffers from a rural small town mentality.

Seattlites firmly believe that civilization in our state ends once you cross the lake

Ellen Kotzin, to answer your question about red and blue states, Red is leaning toward Conservative ie: Republican and Blue is Liberal tendencies ie: Democrat.
You might want to check out the Beautiful Historical town of Snohomish. If you like old victorian style homes and Antiques, I can't think of a better place than Snohomish.
Iven

Spokanites would agree. The only dispute is about which side of the lake the "civilization" is.

Geoff

Dispute? I've never heard of a dispute? Seattlites know exactly where the "civilized" side is. It's is only those who are forever jealous of it that dispute its location.

Ellen, Ivan is correct Snohomish is not a bad place to live, especially since you can see civilization from there, if you stand on a ladder.

Ellen, one thing you may be picking up on is that there is a large divide between western Washington and eastern Washington. I'm not familiar with NY state, but I assume it's similar to NYC vs. the rest of NY state. There have even been semi-serious suggestions about splitting the state. The cultural divide is helped by the fact that the Cascade mountain range runs through the state. If you look at a map, everything west of the mountains is "western Washington" and everything east of the mountains is "eastern Washington." The state still hasn't determined who the next governor will be. The last count had the Republican candidate winning by 42 votes, and there will be a manual recount. The vote was pretty much divided along the same lines as everything else in Washington -- those mountains.

If you're a city person, yeah, you probably wouldn't like Spokane, and you'd really hate Pullman (where I work -- I live across the border in Idaho). But if you're not, it's a great place. I think Outside magazine recently declared it the best place for an outdoors-person to live.

Why are you thinking about Spokane? What are you looking for?

Geoff

My sister in law visits Pasco, and it's warm in the summer and mild winters, and cheap cost of living...that's around that area. Also I saw Spokane on a show and thought it was very family looking with pretty parks.
My culture would fit with seattle but DO NOT like drear and rain. I need sun.
HELP! Will I ever find a happy medium???

:)
Ellen

I do a Ren Fair every year in Richland which is right next to Pasco.
Warm is not a term I would use to describe their summers. It has been as hot as 105 but usually sits around 95 or so. And this is just in June.
It is also quite cold in the winter with temperatures in the mid to lower 30's as well as snow and the occasional ice storm.
It is also dry and dusty and sits next to a major Nuclear waste site that tends to leak all sorts of nasty stuff into the water table.
Really Ellen if you have your heart set on moving to Washington State look on the left side of the mountains where the weather is much more temperate.
Myself I used to live in the center of the state and you couldn't pay me enough to ever move back to it.

Pasco (and Richland and Kennewick) will definitely have fairly mild winters but will get quite hot in the summer.

Spokane does have some very nice parks. There is Riverfront Park, which was the site of the 1974 World's Fair and has an ice rink (seasonal), IMAX theater, assorted amusement rides (seasonal), and one of the best carrousels in the world. (Very nicely restored, with a ring game.)

Another nice park is Manito Park. It has a japanese garden, a formal english garden, a rose garden, a nice conservatory, and is just a very nice place to relax on a summer day.

Payne couldn't be paid enough to move to the east side of the Cascades, and I couldn't be paid enough to move to Seattle. So you'll have to get more opinions if you want to break the tie.

Geoff

Maybe it's global warming but the winters of my youth in central Washington were far from mild. It snowed every year and was generally well below freezing for most of winter.
Summers were very hot with temperatures in the high 90's to low 100's (he had candles on the dining room table melt one year from the heat).
I haven't lived over there for two decades but still have friends and family who do. My mother just had air conditioning put in her house so it would be tolerable to live in in the summer now that she's retired.