2_i 

Given the threads on commuting in challenging weather, the initiative Ride in the Rain Challenge could be of some interest. The riders in the state of Washington are asked to register and log in as many bike trips as possible during November, the rainiest month in the state. The logic is that if they persist in November, they will be able to persist riding across the year. Some of us from the outside might question whether Seattle gets any real rains and not just pretty irrelevant mist. However, I am sure that some mountainous regions in the state have something reminding real rain and even snow in November. Many participants in the challenge come from UW.

acidfast7

I ride everyday I can, regardless of weather.

Seattle gets 37.49" / year.

DAMN, that's a lot compared to the UK.

mcours2006

I ride in the rain a handful times during the year. The biggest nuisance about that is trying to dry the clothes at work so I can wear them on the homeward trip. I can't imagine doing that on a regular basis, like multiple times per week.

wphamilton

52 inches per year here in Alpharetta, raining about 120 days vs 147 in Seattle. My own "ride in the rain challenge" is my daily commute.

acidfast7

Portsmouth gets around 645 millimetres (25.4 in) of rain a year, with a minimum of 1 mm (0.04 in) of rain reported on 103 days a year.

My first 105 commutes here were dry.

Phamilton

I don't know how this stacks up versus other places, but Northern Indiana averages 38" of rain yearly, and 33" of snow.

I have access to a closet where I can hang my damp clothes to dry while I'm working. I also keep a change of clothes at work, along with a towel. I may wait for heavy rain to pass before I leave home or work, but I ride.

CliffordK

Isn't November already past?

We had some very nice weather in November. It is getting a bit worse now. I got drenched yesterday.

caloso

Wow. That's twice what we get here in Sacramento. We're also lucky in that it rarely rains between Easter and Halloween.

fietsbob

Well that did have it's down sides in the last few years, when dry lands caught fire..

What mask did you wear to ride, while the air was a smoky breathing hazard.. ?

PNW does have a Dry season, last year June to late September... we sent local fire crews down to Butte county..





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noglider 

Wow, that's more than we get. NYC gets 45" of rain a year. We have fewer rainy days than Seattle, but we get more rain per hour when it rains.

RubeRad

Down in San Diego, also usually rain-free between Easter/Halloween, but also usually rain-free from Halloween to Easter.

It rains so rarely here that, if I see it coming, I take the car. If I don't see it coming, I either get a little wet or a lot wet, depending on whether my Ikea poncho happens to be with me.

I spent a lovely summer in grad school doing a short-term research project at UW, and sublet a room in an apt just a mile or two north of campus. I don't remember it raining at all. I do remember playing a lot of ultimate on that quad downhill from the campus center, oriented with a fantastic view of Ranier.

wphamilton

I spent my formative years in a place with less than half this annual on average, and even less because there was a drought, and coming to this was a radical adjustment. I felt like buying a canoe because it seemed like it just wouldn't stop.

fietsbob

Seattle is behind a mountain and in front of a mountain range..

here Its 10 miles from the Ocean and to the west of here it's pretty flat .. the results of erosion sediments carried out of the mountains by the river,

Before the Dams and Jettys were built..

Yea , now with satellite imaging you can see the collision of warm tropical air colliding with cold arctic air masses..

West coast its a different story Hawaiian warm air full of moisture circulating upwards around a CCW rotating Low cell ... coming north..
cold air mass inland behind the cascade range .. mostly..

Phamilton

Andy_K 

I heard a comparison like this between Portland and Atlanta when I moved here. Atlanta got more rain in fewer days. The thing that people who don't live in the PNW may not recognize is how tightly packed together our rainy days are. It hardly ever rains here in the summer. In the late fall and early winter it rains almost every day. The year I moved here (1995) we had some amount of rain every single day in the month of November. It's one thing to say, "It's raining today, but I'm going to ride anyway," when you've had a week of dry commutes. It's quite another thing to say, "It's raining again today for the tenth day in a row, but I'm going to keep riding."

In some ways, this is easier. There is a mindset that if you don't ride in the rain you'll hardly ever ride. On the other hand, if you aren't committed to riding every day it can be really easy to get in a mode where you start cherry-picking the dry days and you look back and see that you've only biked to work seven times in a month (my actual total for November).

KraneXL

Thing is, rain in inches/year doesn't really tell the whole story; Some cities get more rain in one day than others get from rain in a month.

For example, London can get 23 inches (583 mm) of rain annually. However, some places in Florida can get 16" (406 mm) of rain in one day! When we think rain, we can't forget about intensity.

fietsbob

Home . just now, maybe a mile, into the wind, good rain gear, no problem..


20 years ago I toured western Ireland, starting in late February, then, I lived in my rain gear for a few months..







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RoadKill

I rarely ride in the rain, first because it rarely rains in Phoenix, and second because when it does rain it rains really hard. We get maybe 10" for the year, but that all comes in about 10 days and mostly only about an hour of rain each of those days following huge dust storms. I don't really want to be caught out in the dust storm or the rain storm.

KraneXL

I used to live in the southeast. When I moved to LA, people would say its raining hard. I'd look out the window and start laughing. I'm reminded of the Crocodile Dundee saying, "that's not a knife".

acidfast7

Yeah, that's why I posted this later in the thread.

Wilmingtech

Im about 90 miles south east of Seattle in the mountains off rt 12. We get between 55-60 inches of rain a year where we live. 95% of that rain comes between late October and early April. From June - Sept the weather is amazing and it almost never rains.

We do get some breaks in the winter with sunny days few and far between. I'll go riding if its "wet" out, meaning its a light rain to heavy drizzle/mist. But I dont care to go out when it starts downpouring. And we do have quite a few days where it just comes down for an hour at a time.

Ive lived in Orlando, Fl before and thats a stark contrast to here when talking of rain. It would rain everyday in the summer when I lived there. That rain came in the afternoon in the form of violent thunderstorms and a half inch of rain in about 30-45 minutes. An hour later the sun was out and everything was drying up.

This year Im trying to get out as much as I can in the winter. I bought a winter specific bike in the form of gravelesque that fits wider tires, has fenders and disc brakes. So far, so good. It holds up well in the rain and I dont find myself fearful of descents.

No commutes here though. The only reason to go out is to get a ride in.

-Sean

wphamilton

We get a lot of those .01"-.1" days and that's where our stat of "120 days of rain per year" comes from but that's not the realistic picture. I might not even get wet on those "rainy" days, and when I do I might not really even notice especially in the summer. When it sets in and rains for a day or two or three is how we get most of it. So while I'm riding in "rain" seemingly all the time, I only catch the real heavy rain 4 or 5 times a year.

Phamilton

2_i 

In my experience in Seattle, where by now I spent maybe 1y of time worth, the rain has been pretty spread out, primarily a drizzle that those of us used to hard rains mostly ignore. In my area in Michigan rains come down hard for about 10 min and then it turns to a lighter rain that may last for hours. Most people wait out those 10min under some cover. The hardest rains I experienced were during typhoons on Japanese eastern coasts including the area later most hardly hit by the 2011 tsunami. Under typhoon, the hard rain extended for 2-3 days and the lighter rain for 2-3 weeks. During the hard rain you would get completely soaked when walking one block under an umbrella. Amazingly, even though trucks were getting overturned on freeways during those few days, people were going normally about their business. I did not ride then and did not see people riding then - it would have been very rough. I did ride though during hard rains in Rwanda. Under equatorial sun Lake Victoria evaporates and clouds carry all that water over Rwanda. The rains there are mostly hard and if you ride farther out you may find it impossible to schedule the ride to avoid them. Elaborate drain system is constructed and maintained by the roads to take all that water out. There is plenty of erosion caused by the water coming down. The water then flows back towards the Lake Victoria which feeds the Nile. When you ride your clothes are saturated with water mixed with red mud brought by the water.

clengman

We have pretty dreary weather in Pittsburgh. We're near the top of the list for annual cloud cover. I was surprised though that our average annual rainfall is pretty well... average. ~38" and 80 rainy days. This year may set a new record, though. We've had 160 rainy days and a total of 55" so far. The previous record was 57" in 2004 and there's some rain in the forecast for much of the rest of the year.