They say it rains a lot here

Sep 24, 2023

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It’s amazing how much rain everything believes England has.

For the record, I grew up in London. It rains on about 160 days of the year, and the total amount of rainfall is around 60cm. Some days are wetter than others of course, but mostly we just get drizzle. It’s rain, for sure, but it doesn’t really get you wet. Sometimes you’d get a downpour that could really drench you, only they rarely last long, so most people would hide under bus shelters or in doorways until the rain had passed. At which point the sun came out to send you on your way.

I used to cycle to work every day. Depending on my office location, I’d spend 1 to 2 hours a day, at least 5 days per week, outside on my bike.

I loved racing through the streets of London in the fresh air, knowing everyone else was crammed into sweaty underground trains. It was almost always faster on a bike too.

Rain was almost never a problem.

Of course, I owned waterproof gear. Even waterproof trousers. But those were for emergencies only. Far too sexy for everyday use of course. Thankfully, I hardly ever had to wear them. I could usually count on one hand the number of times I had to put them on in any one year.

It turns out, London just isn’t very wet.

Apparently that’s not the impression we give foreigners though.

Vancouver on the other hand…Now there’s a wet city!

Despite serious forewarnings from my sister, I genuinely was not prepared for the amount of rain they get there. It’s a rainforest after all. The clue is in the name.

Although it rains around the same number of days as London, they get over 140cm of rain. Or, in North Vancouver - where many of my friends live - 250cm! That’s over FOUR times the amount of rain as London.

Despite that, people in Vancouver thought that London was a rainy place. People would say:

“Oh but you’re from London, you’re used to this”.

No. No I was not!

I used to cycle to work in Vancouver too.

I soon learned to wear my waterproof trousers every single day during winter. And I’d get soaked. Every. Single. Day. It’s not uncommon for it to rain hard for an entire month during November.