Seattle's No.2! Bloomberg Businessweek ranks U.S. cities

Seattle is the second-best city in the country, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. The news org evaluated and ranked the largest 100 U.S. cities and published its results today.

San Francisco grabbed the gold ring at No. 1.

Looking at such factors as leisure, education, economy, crime and air quality, the news org said Seattle was hot stuff (Portland was slightly less hot at No. 5).

“For our runner-up best city, we turn back to the Northwest to the nation’s spiritual home for coffee and personal computing: Seattle.

“Residents of Rain City will take the city’s famously prodigious rainfall in exchange for their high average median income, beautiful water-bound locale, and standout clean air. Microsoft (MSFT) and Boeing (BA) provide tens of thousands of jobs to the area, for those who can’t toss fish at the Pike Place Market.”

Great to be high on that list of course … even though Bloomberg Businessweek got the rain thing mostly wrong. We do get rain, but mostly clouds and mist and, well, you know …

In fact, Seattle only gets about 37 inches of rain per year. As San Francisco-based WeatherBill, Inc. found, these are the cities with the heaviest rainfall (as we reported in our I Wonder Why … ? story on why Seattleites don’t use umbrellas):

• Mobile, AL.: 67 inches average annual
• Pensacola, FL: 65 inches average annual   
• New Orleans, LA: 64 inches average annual
• West Palm Beach, FL.: 63 inches average annual   
• Lafayette, LA: 62 inches average annual
• Baton Rouge, LA: 62 inches average annual   
• Miami, FL: 62 inches average annual
• Port Arthur, TX: 61 inches average annual
• Tallahassee, FL: 61 inches average annual
• Lake Charles, LA: 58 inches average annual