This region has more in common with Seattle than it does with the rest of Alaska. Like the Olympic peninsula, it is a temperate rain forest. Winters aren't super cold, but it rains a lot and gets a modest amount of snow.
Locals tend to live in the knee-high rubber boots the Brits call "Wellies." You'd rarely be outside in short sleeves or without some sort of jacket or sweater. Temperatures rarely exceed 60 F or fall below 20 F. Sunshine is rare enough to be memorable, skin cancer is uncommon.
In Ketchikan they claim it fails to rain some forty days a year. Translation: it rains 325 days a year, on average. A mountain on the adjacent island is called "the barometer," if you can see the summit it's going to rain, if you cannot see the summit, it's raining.
I know this climate, having lived in Eugene, Oregon, for three years. It was relatively common to go two weeks without seeing the sun or blue sky. It's no place for someone who has SAD, 'cause that is what you end up - sad.
In Eugene in those days the conventional wisdom was most fatal car accidents were one-car suicides. Our acting university president drove his VW head on into a loaded logging truck, with fatal results of course. I wasn't tempted to suicide but I certainly considered getting out of Dodge, at the expense of my doctorate process. I'm a SoCal native who doesn't like dreary gray skies.
Tomorrow we sail Glacier Bay, for me the high point of the cruise. The DrsC have done it before and enjoyed it a lot - really spectacular scenery.
