Yakima Weather – 5 Things Anyone Considering Moving Here Should Know

One of the great things about living in a valley, surrounded by hills, is that tornadoes would just bounce off the hills and go elsewhere, not that we have tornadoes around here. Same with hurricanes. Seattle is on a fault line so we'll get the occasional "did you feel that, too?" barely enough to register anything earthquake from that area, but nothing really. Active volcanoes aside, Yakima is a great place if you like watching Wizard of Oz, but don't want to experience it.

In school we learned we have 4 seasons. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter and, in Yakima, it feels like it. Spring brings the fresh air and warmer weather, Summers can scorch in the triple digits at times, but it's not bad, Falls is when things start cooling down as the leaves fall off the non-evergreen trees and winter will bring the chill with snow. There are several places in the US where hot weather lasts too long, winters last too long, I think they're about just right, one season every 3 months. It's just about perfect weather in Yakima.

In the Summer, yes, it will get up to the 90s and we'll have it in the 100's sometimes, but it's a dry desert heat, not a humid heat. If you've ever been to the south, like Florida, it's hot, but it also feels like life is weighing you down because it's so humid. Since Yakima is technically in a desert region, it will be hot, but you can carry on your day, so long as you stay hydrated.

Again, Yakima is nestled in a valley so most of the winds go right over us. We'll have pleasant breezes and maybe a couple times out of the year the wind will blow if it's blowing east to west through the valley, but we're in really decent shape. I've lived in some flat places where we had 30-40 mile per hour winds on average. It sure made me miss Yakima. I prefer rain, snow, sleet and hail over wind so one of the nice things about Yakima is that if you'd like wind, Yakima is a great place to be.

It does snow, every year. I don't remember one year that snow has never fallen in Yakima so it's something we're all familiar. The nice thing is that the first snow fall is often times in November or even as late as December and the first couple of snow days don't really stick around. The snow doesn't usually stay until the heavy snow in January. This isn't the case every year, but it's a good average. It also melts fairly quickly as spring gets closer so even if it does snow, wait a bit and it won't be there long.