Precipitation on the western Olympic Peninsula is highly seasonal. The bulk falls during a long, wet winter of successive Pacific storms from autumn into spring, while midsummer is often relatively dry and mild. This strong seasonal contrast shapes the rainforest, which depends on the soaking winter months rather than steady year-round rain.
Here's a thing about all this rain on the wet side: it isn't spread evenly through the year. The peninsula soaks through a long, gray, dripping winter, when one Pacific storm rolls in right behind the last from fall clear into spring. Then summer flips the switch. July and August can run weeks at a stretch nearly dry and mild, the famous Northwest payoff for all those soggy months. So if you came in sunshine, don't be fooled. The forest you're driving through earns its green in a wet season you're not seeing.
Photo: Ron Clausen · CC BY-SA 4.0
