Holy Zarquon's singing fish - it's raining in June!

For many people not living in California the exclamation in the above will seem out of place. Sometimes I have to remind myself I spent 27 years living in the United Kingdom where rain is an expected feature of any day. It could rain three times in one day and be hot and sunny in between. In fact after over ten years living in California I'm inclined to say I wouldn't call Californian weather "weather" at all, more like "climate".

Basically where I live the weather is "in the winter it rains, in the summer it doesn't and its sunny 75% to 100% of the day". It would be 100% except for the San Francisco Bay marine layer that causes low cloud in the morning - or all day if you live in some parts of San Francisco. For the most part the daily weather pretty much matches the average climate. Rain here is forecast days in advance and often as not is greeted with ambivalence since it means snow in the Sierras for winter sports, and later on water in the reservoirs for keeping our otherwise sun parched plants green in the summer.

Back in the UK the weather is all over the place all year around. The daily temperatures can be cold or hot, it can rain several times in one day, or not at all. The rest of the time it may be sunny or overcast or foggy or... something else. In fact I even remember it snowing in May. As one person said "you can tell its summer because the rain is warm". Four weeks without rain in the UK would be classified as a drought, over here it is just any month between May and September. In fact the average total rainfall in Oakland California for the entire five months from May through September is a massive 15mm - or a little over 1/2 inch. That's less than half of the average for the months of April or October alone.

So, as you can see, any rain here at all in June, or for that matter any summer month is quite an anomaly. Add to that the fact that most of that 15mm of rain between May and September comes from the occasional thunderstorm (also very rare - I probably see about one a year) then true pissistant [sic] rain over several hours or more is even more unusual. In the UK most areas get at least 50mm (2 inches) of rain per month in the summer, on average it rains about one in three days and in the south of England average summer rainfall is just a half of that in winter, while thunderstorms occur about 12 days a year.

Hopefully from the above you can see how an ex-pat living in California could actually be forgiven for saying "I miss the weather".

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