New Windows for the Flattest, Windiest of the San Juans
Lopez has a different character than its neighbors, and different window problems too. The island is famously flat and open, with working farmland running down its spine and long fetches of open water on every side. When winter southerlies come up the Strait of Juan de Fuca, there are no hills to break them; the wind crosses those open fields and hits south-facing glass at full strength, carrying salt with it. Homeowners from Lopez Village down to MacKaye Harbor know the sound of a big November blow against single-pane glass, and it is not a comforting one.
The upside of the rain shadow is real: Lopez stays sunnier and drier than Bellingham or Anacortes. But that sun works on window frames too, and older vinyl units chalk and warp on southern exposures while original wood sash from mid-century farmhouses rots quietly at the bottom rail where salt-fog condensation collects. Most of the windows we replace on Lopez fail from some combination of those two forces, and the fix has to answer both at once: tougher frames against the sun, tighter assemblies against the wind.