Bend is sunny? PDX, SEA, EUG may say so...
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9/28/2006
People love to say that in Oregon once you cross the mountains, the climate is completely different. Bend is held out as the drier alternative to the soaked towns of Eugene, Salem, and Portland. True it is drier than those towns. But people claiming 300 days of sunny weather have gone off their rocker. Try using the climate resource on this website -- it says Bend has 162 days of sunny weather annually. Compare this to genuinely sunny places like Denver (245 days) and Santa Fe (283 days) or even Ashland, OR (198 days). True Bend does not get much precipitation, but who cares if it's cloudy all of the time? The Cascades do take much of the moisture out of the fronts coming from the Pacific. The clouds remain. Bend is also tremendously overpriced. Its ratio of median salary to median housing price is among the worst in the nation and does not portend well in terms of affordability and housing appreciation.
There are good things about Bend, and many of the other posters covered them -- access to the outdoors, recreation and beauty being the most important. Just be realistic about the weather.
David | Bozeman, MT