Cold spell....

Would you rather have the annual weather cycle you have now or the opposite, which I have, with horrid hot summers (April/May-September) and mostly pleasant winters (3 weeks of really cold to us)? When you step outside here in the summer people say its hard to breathe. I have done the tent thing {as a kid} in the north where it got below zero every winter-but not permanently, just for fun.

That tent sure has to clear up the budget some. I would not want to try it here.
For some reason, the wife wanted to camping in June last year. If you folded me up into an oven it would not have been less comfortable.

This is the best time of weather here, dipping into the 40's at night at worst and as high as 70 in the day. We still have the gnats, west-nile-virus mosquitos, fire ants, and constrictors-snakes as pests... Not sure if I would trade for bears and cold or your volcano. Do you have earth quakes that far north? I know Alaska did.

Spent 15 LONG summers in Hell.....aka the AZ Desert.....I will gladly take this weather over that any day. Ernie & I were out running errands yesterday, coming home at 4:30 it was already dark and snow flurries were falling....I asked The Boss, who spent the first 43 or so years of her life in Hell if she wanted to move back.....she smiled and said never.....and started griping about we had better get a truck load of snow this winter....She was upset this morning to see that we only had a dusting of snow....she was hoping for at least a foot of the glorious white stuff....

Earthquakes? Not that I know of. I did read someplace where a fault line runs thru the Eastern Washington area.....