I have the opposite opinion. Of course, I live in Denver, not Seattle. But I used fenders for a while and found them to be annoying and not very helpful. First of all, if it's raining you'll get soaked anyway. People may say rain water is different than dirty water splashed up from the street, but I found that to not matter much. I guess it helps that I wear bike specific clothing and can shower and change on each end of my commute. The fenders I had were also noisy and gave me toe overlap issues. I just thought they weren't worth the hassle. They were pretty much useful only when it wasn't raining but when I had to go through runoff of some sort.