It's raining again

In the Inuit language apparently there's 40 odd words to describe different types of snowfall and as it's raining again here today, it got me thinking. It rains a lot here - we're on the watershed for various rivers here, the main one being the Trent, which starts only 10 or so miles from us. The Midlands is a network of rivers and canals, so although we may be the furtherest from the sea, we still get seagulls crying around here.

Anyway it got me thinking - snow and rain words, not seagulls. I call it "liquid sunshine" to make it sound more positive, but when it rains, it can: "lash it down", "rain like cats and dogs", "spit a little", "*iss it down". We can have "a few drops" or it can "bucket it down": the showers may be "scattered" or "more frequent". Poshly it's precipation and there are ranges from Very Light (less than 0.25 mm/hour) to Extreme rain (where it falls at greater than 50.0 mm/hour, as Cumbria found out a few weeks ago). It can rain in torrents, or the black clouds can merely threaten. And then we can have thunderstorms, too. But when hubby and I were honeymooning in Yorkshire 14 1/2 years ago (the weather actually wasn't too wet that week), I came across a postcard with this poem that just about summed it up:

Rain

It rained and it rained and rained and rained

The average fall was well maintained

And when the tracks were simply bogs

It started raining cats and dogs.

After a drought of half an hour

We had a most refreshing shower

And then the most curious thing of all

A gentle rain began to fall.

Next day was also fairly dry

Save for the deluge from the sky

Which wetted the party to the skin

And after that the rain set in.

It reminds me of an Outward Bound course my then first husband enrolled me onto - Learning to Sail a boat in Scotland in the last week of August (around 20 years ago). It threw it down most of the week and I have never been as wet in the whole of my life as that week. It only stopped raining long enough for you to dry out for it to rain again, and to keep warm you went to bed in wet clothes as they dryed during the night. I hated the sailing, particularly when we were zooming along having to move from one side to the other of the boat to avoid capsizing with the water just an inch from the side not weightened down, but I learnt a lot of other things from the course principally one of the sayings close to my heart: "A ship in harbour is safe, but that's not what ships were built for." We also need rain otherwise there would be no rainbows, no promises anew. So I aim to count rainbows, not thunderstorms, and often go out without a hood up in the rain, to remind me I'm alive. So it's liquid sunshining here. The photo's from an afternoon walk I took last May around a lake by JCB in Rocester, which started sunny but ended raining. The goose was just standing like that in a puddle as it threw it down all around. Hope the weather's kind with you. More rain's forecast for the weekend here.

xx