Destination Seattle
From the towering Space Needle with its great restaurant to the excitement of the waterfront piers, Seattle is a great vacation and getaway destination.
Seattle boasts of extraordinary five-star hotels and restaurants and a booming tourist industry. If you’re headed to Seattle for business, try to take an extra day to visit Chinatown or take a tour on the Victoria Clipper Ferry.
You might even want to head out across one of the world’s longest floating bridges and take a walk around St. Mary’s Island or drive south a bit to take an underwater look at Puget Sound from the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma or grab an great meal at Rainier Restaurant at Emerald Downs.
If you are into the night life, you might want to check out some of the nightclubs on Capital Hill or in Pioneer Square.
Don’t forget to stop by any one of the hundreds of mobile coffee carts in the area for a latte or cappuccino. Seattle’s baristas create some of the best coffees in the world.
Find you a good hotel in an area that will let you walk or hop on any one of the myriad buses that will quickly get you from place to place in the around downtown, or reserve a room at one of the high-quality hotels surrounding Mount Rainier.
Plan ahead, though, because there are so many things to do that you’ll have to schedule your time wisely if you want to get the most out of your Seattle adventure.
Seattle (pronounced /siætl /) is a coastal port city and the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.
It is located in the state of Washington between an arm of the Pacific Ocean called Puget Sound and Lake Washington, about 96 miles (155 km) south of the Canada–United States border in King County, of which it is the county seat.
The Seattle area has been inhabited for at least 4,000 years,but European settlement began only in the mid-19th century. The first permanent white settlers—Arthur A. Denny and those subsequently known as the Denny party—arrived November 13, 1851. Early settlements in the area were called "New York-Alki" and "Duwamps".
In 1853, Doc Maynard suggested that the main settlement be renamed "Seattle," an anglicized rendition of the name of Noah Sealth, the collective chief of the two indigenous tribes.
As of 2006, the city had an estimated population of 582,174 and an estimated metropolitan area population of approximately 3.2 million.
Seattle is the hub and largest city of the Seattle metropolitan area, often called Puget Sound, which also includes Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett. From 1869 until 1982, Seattle was known as the "Queen City".
Seattle's current official nickname is the "Emerald City," the result of a contest held in the early 1980s to designate a new nickname; the reference is to the lush evergreen trees in the surrounding area.
Seattle is also referred to informally as the "Rainy City" (though, in fact, it is more cloudy than rainy), "Gateway to Alaska," and "Jet City," the last from the local influence of Boeing.
Seattle residents are known as Seattleites.
Seattle is often regarded as the birthplace of grunge music, and has a reputation for heavy coffee consumption; coffee companies founded or based in Seattle include Starbucks, Seattle's Best Coffee, and Tully's.
There are also many successful independent artisanal espresso roasters and cafes.
Seattle was the site of the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization, and the attendant demonstrations by anti-globalization activists. Researchers at Central Connecticut State University ranked Seattle the most literate city of America's sixty-nine largest cities in 2005 and 2006 and second most literate in 2007.
Moreover, analysis conducted in 2004 by the United States Census Bureau of 2002 survey data indicated that Seattle was the most educated large city in the U.S. with 48.8 percent of residents 25 and older having at least bachelor degrees.
Based on per capita income, in 2006 the Seattle metropolitan area ranked 17th out of 363 metropolitan areas in a study by the Census Bureau.
Major events
Major events in Seattle's history include the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, which destroyed the central business district (but took no lives); the anti-Chinese riots of 1885–1886; the Klondike gold rush, which made Seattle a major transportation center; the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the layout of the University of Washington campus; the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the first general strike in the country; the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, a World's Fair; the 1990 Goodwill Games; the APEC leaders conference in 1993, and the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, marked by street protests and a series of riots.
Geography
Seattle is located between an inlet of the Pacific Ocean to the west called Puget Sound and Lake Washington to the east at the mouth of the Duwamish River, which empties into the city's chief harbour, Elliott Bay, an inlet of the Sound.
West beyond the Sound are the Kitsap Peninsula and Olympic Mountains, on the Olympic Peninsula; east beyond Lake Washington and the eastside suburbs are Lake Sammamish and the Cascade Range.
The sea, rivers, forests, lakes, and fields were once rich enough to support one of the world's few sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. Opportunities for sailing, skiing, bicycling, camping, and hiking are nearby and accessible almost year-round.
The city itself is hilly, though not uniformly so.
Like Rome, the city is said to lie on seven hills; the lists vary, but typically include Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and the former Denny Hill. The Wallingford and Mount Baker neighbourhoods are technically located on hills as well.
Many of the hilliest areas are near the city center, with Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Beacon Hill collectively constituting something of a ridge along an isthmus between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington.
The topography of Downtown has been reshaped by regrading projects, a seawall, and the construction of an artificial island, Harbor Island (completed 1909), at the mouth of the city's industrial Duwamish Waterway.
The man-made Lake Washington Ship Canal incorporates four natural bodies of water: Lake Union, Salmon Bay, Portage Bay, and Union Bay, connecting Puget Sound to Lake Washington.
Seattle is in an earthquake zone and has experienced a number of significant quakes, most recently (as of 2007) the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually Earthquake, February 28, 2001, which did significant architectural damage, especially in the Pioneer Square area (built on reclaimed land, as are the Industrial District and part of Downtown), but caused no fatalities.
Other strong quakes occurred on December 14, 1872 (estimated at 7.3 or 7.4 magnitude), April 13, 1949 (7.1), and April 29, 1965 (6.5).
The 1949 quake caused eight known deaths, all in Seattle; the 1965 quake caused three deaths in Seattle directly, and one more by heart failure. Although the Seattle Fault passes just south of Downtown, neither it nor the Cascadia subduction zone has caused an earthquake since the city's founding.
The Cascadia subduction zone poses the threat of an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or greater, capable of seriously damaging the city and collapsing many buildings, especially in zones built on fill.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 369.2 km² (142.5 mi²), 217.2 km² (83.9 mi²) of which is land and 152.0 km² (58.7 mi²) water.
The total area is 41.16% water.
Climate
Seattle's mild climate is usually classified as Marine west coast (Cfb).
However, its wet-winter/dry-summer pattern shows some characteristics of a Mediterranean climate (Csb), and it is sometimes classified this way.
Temperature extremes are moderated by adjacent Puget Sound, the greater Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. The region is partially protected from Pacific storms by the Olympic Mountains and from Arctic air by the Cascade Range.
Despite being on the margin of the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, the city has a reputation for frequent rain.
Despite its relatively frequent rainfall, the so-called "rainy city" receives a smaller quantity of actual precipitation annually, at 37.1 inches (94 cm), than New York City, Atlanta, Houston, and most cities of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
Seattle's worldwide reputation for rain derives from this frequency of precipitation as well as the fact that it is cloudy an average of 226 days per year (cf. 132 in New York City).
Most of the precipitation falls as drizzle or light rain, with only occasional downpours. Spring, late fall, and winter are filled with days when it does not rain but looks as if it might because of cloudy, overcast skies.
As for temperature, winters are cool and wet with average lows around 35–40 °F (2–4 °C) on winter nights. Colder weather can occur, but seldom lasts more than a few days.
Summers are dry and warm, with average daytime highs around 73–80 °F (22.2–26.7 °C).
Hotter weather usually occurs only during a few summer days. Seattle's hottest official recorded temperature was 100 °F (37.8 °C) on July 20, 1994; the coldest recorded temperature was 0 °F (-18 °C) on January 31, 1950.
Eighty miles (130 km) to the west, the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park on the western flank of the Olympic Mountains receives an annual average rainfall of 142 inches (361 cm), and the state capital, Olympia—south of the rain shadow—receives an annual average rainfall of 52 inches (132 cm).
Snowfall is very infrequent, especially at lower altitudes and near the coast, and is usually light and fleeting, lasting only a few days.
Average annual snowfall, as measured at Sea–Tac Airport, is 13 inches (33 cm).
Seattle's record snowfall was 20 inches (51 cm) on January 13, 1950. Sunnier and drier "California weather" typically dominates from mid-July to mid-September.
An average of 0.8 inches (2.0 cm) of rain falls in July and 1.0 inch (2.5 cm) in August. Although the summer climate is considerably drier and less humid than in areas with humid continental climates, a slight dampness can be occasionally felt, usually when temperatures reach above 80 °F (26.7 °C).
This dampness is typically more noticeable during the evening when the temperatures have dropped. Because of this, Seattle experiences occasional summer thunderstorms.
The Puget Sound Convergence Zone is an important feature of Seattle's weather.
In the convergence zone, air arriving from the north meets air flowing in from the south.
Both streams of air originate over the Pacific Ocean; airflow is split by the Olympic Mountains to Seattle's west, then reunited by the Cascade Mountains to the east. When the air currents meet, they are forced upward, resulting in convection.
Thunderstorms caused by this activity can occur north and south of town, but Seattle itself rarely receives worse weather than occasional thunder and ice-pellet showers. Nonetheless, the Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm in December 2006 brought heavy rain and winds gusting up to 69 mph (111 km/h).
One Seattleite drowned in her collapsed and flooded basement; power failures were widespread, with some left without power for up to eleven days.
An exception to Seattle's dampness often occurs in El Niño years, when the marine weather systems track as far south as California and little precipitation falls in the Puget Sound area. Since the region's water comes from mountain snowpacks during the drier summer months, El Niño winters can not only produce substandard skiing but can result in water rationing and a shortage of hydroelectric power the following summer.
