Mapsy
It sounds like you have the right idea about needing more diversity and trying to figure out whether moving is feasible right now.
Being an only child, I tend to think independently and I research a lot of things for myself. There are lots of misconceptions about every part of the country. One that we have alluded to is that the south is more "friendly". That brings up the issue of what exactly does "friendly" mean. If it means being open to new friendships with people that are from far away places who may not be exactly the same as we are, then then southerners aged 40 to 60 are definitely not more friendly that the rest of the country. If it simply means saying "Hi ya'll" to everyone we see in the grocery store then the south is more friendly.
Another misconception is that Seattle gets a lot of rain. That misconception has been promoted in part by the movies, in which it is often raining hard in Seattle. It almost never rains "hard" in Seattle.
Annual rainfall in Seattle is 35.9 inches and in Charlottesville, VA is 46.9 inches.
view linkSeattle has more "precipitation days" than Charlottesville (155 vs 122 out of 365), but it often amounts to a very very light misting in the morning hours followed by partly cloudy to patchy sunny days in the afternoon. It is very common for Seattle to have days where rainfall amounted to only .01 inches. Another thing most people dont know about Seattle is that it has dry summers. Total precip for May thru Sept averages about 7 inches in Seattle
view link For Charlottesville it is about 19 inches. Along with the dry summers of course we get less humid heat in the summer. Here in the Portland, Oregon area on a hot summer afternoon at 90 degrees we typically have humidity around 25%.
There are a lot of other benefits of the northwest: better traffic safety, low crime, great scenery, active healthy people, great culture, lots of things to do and places to go, etc. So dont let the "it rains all the time in Seattle" people get to you.
