I moved to Seattle a little over a year ago. These are the things nobody told me, ranked roughly by how much they surprised me.
The mountains change you. I did not expect to become a skier. I am now, unambiguously, a skier. The proximity of the Cascades rewires your weekends in a way that is difficult to explain until it happens.
The gray is real, but overblown. Yes, it rains. No, it is not as oppressive as the memes suggest. The real shift is the short days in December — that one takes adjustment.
Making friends as an adult is a project. The tech-industry stereotype of the "Seattle freeze" has some truth to it, but mostly it's a prompt: you have to be the one organizing the dinner, the hike, the ski trip. Once you are, people show up.
Coffee is a personality. I came in skeptical. I left with a grinder.
I'll update this list in another year.