Los Angeles to Seatle..Questions

Major highway all the way, just about on any of the highways. We gone a few times straight up the "5". Boring from LA to Sacramento. Lovely drive the rest of the way up. Once you get into Oregon the road surface becomes much improved. Redding makes a great stop with lots to see, same with Shasta area. If you have time you can shift west and go up the Oregon coast, or stay on the five and stop at 7 Feathers Casino, nice rv park, and stay on 5 and spend a day or two in the Salem area. Portland, the city that wants to stay weird, as a great street fair every week and of course Voodoo Donuts. Lots of wine tasting, and driving the Colorado River gorge seeing all the waterfalls. Wonderful trip.

Seattle has Mediterranean climate just like LA, warm dry summers, cool wet winters. We can have snow, but it rarely stays around more than a day or two. We can also have dry spells. But more typically we have 2-3 days spells of drizzle, followed by 3 days of dry (though not necessarily sunny). Our winter days are also shorter.

But regarding the drive, you have 3 main options:
- coastal (US101), which will be cool and wet all the way from San Francisco north
- central valley, with one mountain crossing (CA/OR border) (like Seattle, as I just described).
- east side of the Cascades - much drier, good chance of being clear, but also likely to be cool/cold.

Weather depends a long on where the jet stream is. If overhead, we get a constant stream of low intensity storms, with an occasional soaker. But we can have an occasional high ridge, with clear weather. Or if a cold front flows south from Canada, it will be quite cold in the interior, with not-quite so cold flowing over the mountains.

Across the Siskiyous you can expect to see snow. Depending on what is coming in from the Pacific it could be nothing on the roads to chains required anywhere from just north of Redding to Cottage Grove. If you do not want to carry chains, go up the coast on 101. On the coast you will guaranteed have lots of rain, but unlikely to have snow.