It’s raining today in Vancouver. That’s not a surprising thing for us, rather, it’s a way of life. My husband and I are lucky—neither of us are bothered by the rain in the way that some people are. We’ve lived here for over 30 years now but if a person can’t take weeks on end of heavy overcast winter skies and damp cold rain, for the sake of their sanity, they have to leave.
For me, a walk in the rain, when properly dressed against the damp and with an umbrella raised, feels more adventurous than a normal walk. Not as much as a trek through a snowstorm but along the same lines. We learned early on that out here, if you delay going outside because it is raining, nothing will get done and life will pass you by. The key to living with rain is the knowledge that you will eventually dry out if you get wet and, of course, to dress for the part.
One of the great benefits of a rainy day is Getting Back Home. Rain makes home feel cozier and dinner taste better. Crawling into bed with the sounds of the rain outside the window feels like being gifted a luxury that you could never afford to buy. It’s that relaxing.
Also mystically relaxing for me is the smell of rain. That earthy smell of rain on dry ground is one of life’s unmatchable scents. The name of that smell is petrichor and there is a great deal of science behind how and why that smell is made. I will leave you to research it for yourself if it interests you—it’s a bit out of my lane. All I am sure of is that the smell of rain will always soothe me and boost my spirits.
Today, it is raining fairly hard, and a certain phrase comes to mind. The phrase “raining cats and dogs” doesn’t have a documented history but you’ve got to admit it’s a colourful expression. In the Afrikaans language, their version of a hard rain translates into “it’s raining old tribalwomen with knobsticks”. Oh! The Welsh second that assessment as their phrase translates to “raining old ladies and sticks”. Where did this image even come from? Let’s just hope that never happens. The always creative Portuguese have 6 phrases to reference a hard rain that when translated, range from “it’s raining penknives”, to one that I wouldn’t mind at all, “it’s raining chorizos”. Yummy, but not without an element of danger.
Humans have been using various forms of rain gauges to measure how much rain falls since 400 – 500 BC when folks in India, as well as the Ancient Greeks, started keeping records. I don’t know how much rain they got annually, but the wettest Canadian spot is at Hucuktlis Lake, 25 kms southwest of Port Alberni, over on the west coast of Vancouver Island. No one actually lives there but there’s a fish hatchery that keeps notes (and then goes home and has a bowl of nice soup in front of the fireplace!). Hucuktlis Lake gets an average of 6,903 mm of rain annually. Almost 7 meters of rain a year. Imagine if that was in chorizos instead of millimetres!
The Canadian place to get the least amount of rain each year is a spot in Nunavut. There isn’t a pinpoint that my research could reliably guarantee but the whole Territory only averages 110 mms and Alert claims to be the 4th driest spot while omitting to mention the names of those who beat it out. Very frustrating, but I sense I might be splitting hairs on the issue anyway.
Here’s a shocking fact: raindrops are never teardrop shaped. I find that disappointing. Small raindrops, 2mm-ish, are almost round but as they get larger, their bottoms flatten out (that feels familiar) due to wind resistance on the drop’s ride to the ground. And by larger, I mean 5mm-ish. Anything bigger than about 5mms renders the raindrop unwieldy and at that point it starts to droop into the shape of say, a fortune cookie, until it splits itself into 2 smaller drops and carries on.
Due to the air resistance, water droplets in clouds tend to remain stationary. It’s only when there is air turbulence that the droplets bump into each other and mesh together like bubbles in bathwater. Scientists like to call this process “coalescence”. Once the meshing drops get heavy enough to ignore the resistance of the air, they’ll drop from the clouds. Their coalescence-ing isn’t done yet and the drops will continue to bump into each other, growing larger and then doing their downsizing dance, as they fall. Usually.
There is a record held by Brazil and the Marshall Islands stemming from a particularly smoky time in 2004, during which scientists can only presume that the drops were formed from condensation that gathered around large smoky air particles in these warm moist regions as they fell. The drops were able collide but not subdivide. Those raindrops clocked in at around 10mms. Yikes!
For the sake of analysis, scientists have measured the speed at which rain falls, at sea level on a day that carried no wind. It was determined (how???) that drizzle, which they classify as raindrops that are 0.5mm in size, travel to earth at a rate of 7.2 km/hr. Our average human walking speed is 4.8 km/hr. One of those bigger drops of around 5mms, screams down at a rate of 32 km/h, which is the top speed at which one can legally operate a standard e-bike in Canada. Wow. That could take your eye out!
While all of this scientific stuff is interesting to me, I still maintain that I am more bewitched by the feeling of rain than by the science. I can be lulled to sleep by the sound, enlivened by the smell, and will always be an eager participant whenever a rainy day beckons me outside to go for a walk. In fact, I think I might just grab my fleece jacket and my trusty umbrella and do just that.
When I get back, let’s make a pot of tea!
