City site

Seattle lies on the southeastern shore of Puget Sound, a deep 100-mile- (160-km-) long inlet of the northern Pacific Ocean. The central portion of the city faces Elliott Bay, a deep-floored extension. At Shilshole Bay, to the northwest, Puget Sound is joined by the 8-mile- (13-km-) long Lake Washington Ship Canal. The canal passes through Lake Union, Portage Bay, and Union Bay to Lake Washington, a 22-mile (35-km) stretch of fresh water bordered by thriving cities and towns; some of these towns are connected by bridge to Seattle. Bainbridge and Vashon islands, in Puget Sound, contain numerous bedroom communities, and cities across the sound are increasingly being integrated into the Seattle conurbation.

Seattle lies in the Puget Lowland, the structure of which is determined by the movement of plates along the Juan de Fuca subduction zone to the west. A tectonic feature, the Seattle Fault, crosses Puget Sound in an east-west direction, traveling through downtown Seattle westward to the Cascade Range. The region is tectonically and volcanically active; significant earthquakes occurred along the Juan de Fuca Plate in 1949, 1965, and 2001. The region’s present landscape is the product less of earthquake action than of three to six episodes of intense glaciation—the last of which occurred about 15,000 years ago—that scoured out Puget Sound and deposited great quantities of sediment that are subject to erosion, landslides, weathering, and other nonglacial processes.

The Seattle waterfront comprises mostly mudflats and coastal lowland carved by the Duwamish River—much of which was dredged and straightened in the early 20th century to create the Duwamish Waterway, an industrial channel—and by smaller streams. Beyond the shores of Puget Sound and Lake Washington, the landscape is an attractive mixture of rolling hills and a few steep ridges, the result of a landscape-altering program that occurred in the early 1900s. Drainage occurs through a network of streams, some channelized and some more or less natural. The ever-growing urbanization of the region has led to an increase in the incidence of intracity flooding as tree-lined meadows and other catchments give way to lawns and parking lots that cannot hold rainwater runoff. Mountains, including 14,410-foot (4,392-meter) Mount Rainier and the distant peaks of the Cascade and Olympic ranges, frame the skyline. The city center lies approximately 110 miles (180 km) to the south of the U.S.-Canadian border, and Seattle enjoys a long-standing historical and commercial connection with the Canadian province of British Columbia. The city also lies about one-third of the way to the Pacific Ocean from the Snoqualmie Pass of the Cascade Range, which provides an overland route into the interior of the Pacific Northwest.

Climate

Seattle’s climate is temperate, with cool summers and mild winters. To the west, the Olympic Mountains provide protection from the heavy winter rains that frequently inundate the Pacific coast of Washington, while the tall Cascades to the east shield the city from midcontinental extremes of heat and cold. Average high temperatures in July seldom exceed the mid-70s F (about 24 °C), while average highs in January are in the upper 40s F (about 8 °C). The temperature drops below freezing for about 10 to 15 days annually. Owing to the confluence of humid continental and oceanic weather systems, the sky is often overcast. However, the city receives an average of only 37 inches (940 mm) of precipitation each year. The summer sky is usually at least partly clear, but overall there are fewer than 60 completely sunny days annually.