Vous avez dit « pluie » ?

Betty C's comment on my last topic about how damp the Touraine climate is got me to thinking. So I did some research. I have long assumed a grape-growing area like ours would have to enjoy a relatively dry climate. But maybe not.

Rain in the vineyards around Saint-Aignan in January

I found a site that gives climate data for the largest French cities. I went through it and picked out 25 cities that are distributed all across and around France. Then I ranked them from driest (lowest annual precipitation) to wettest (highest annual precipitation). The rainfall figure is in millimeters first and then in inches.

01. Perpignan .... 572 mm ... 22.5"
02. Clermont ..... 591 mm ... 23.3"
03. Strasbourg ... 610 mm ... 24.0"
04. Reims ........ 611 mm ... 24.1"
05. Orléans ...... 637 mm ... 25.1"
06. Paris ........ 642 mm ... 25.3"
07. Rennes ....... 649 mm ... 25.6"
08. Toulouse ..... 656 mm ... 25.8"
09. Tours ........ 684 mm ... 26.9"
10. Lille ........ 687 mm ... 27.0"
11. Montpellier .. 699 mm ... 27.5"
12. Caen ......... 711 mm ... 28.0"
13. Dijon ........ 732 mm ... 28.8"
14. Romorantin ... 733 mm ... 28.9"
15. La Rochelle .. 755 mm ... 29.7"
16. Metz ......... 766 mm ... 30.2"
17. Nice ......... 767 mm ... 30.2"
18. Rouen ........ 785 mm ... 30.9"
19. Nantes ....... 789 mm ... 31.1"
20. Lyon ......... 825 mm ... 32.5"
21. Bordeaux ..... 923 mm ... 36.3"
22. Grenoble ..... 979 mm ... 38.5"
23. Limoges ..... 1023 mm ... 40.3"
24. Besançon .... 1108 mm ... 43.6"
25. Brest ....... 1109 mm ... 43.7"

I put Paris, Tours, and Romorantin in red because Paris is a point of reference and Tours and Romo are the cities that are closest to Saint-Aignan. Unfortunately, I didn't find any climate data for Rodez.

Saint-Aignan is closer to Romorantin than it is to Tours, so maybe our rainfall amounts are closer to Romo's too. That would make us even wetter compared to Paris. Orléans is much drier, and even drier than Paris.

I thought Paris would be closer in rainfall to Rouen. But I guess Rouen squeezes most of the rain out of the clouds before they ever make it to Paris. When I lived in Rouen all those years ago, people there used to say about their city's weather: "It doesn't rain much, but it rains all the time." Constant drizzle is what they meant.

It's surprising that Limoges is nearly as wet at Brest. And Besançon? I guess Limoges and Besançon are both on the west side of slopes where the rain gets wrung out of clouds coming in from lower altitudes.

It's not surprising to see that Brest, on the Atlantic in Brittany, gets so much rain. Nantes is also close the Atlantic and is wet too — do you know the late singer Barbara's song called Il pleut sur Nantes?

But then look at Lyon — it's rainier than Nantes and much rainier than Paris. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised the only time I ever went to Lyon that it rained all day, and it was a hard cold rain.

Actually, the rainiest city in France, according to the data I found, is Biarritz, on the southwest coast south of Bordeaux. Can you imagine that it gets 1483 mm of rain a year — 58.4 inches. And it's a big seaside resort. Bordeaux itself is pretty wet, so there goes the theory that grape-growing requires dry weather.

It's not surprising to see that Perpignan, on the Mediterranean, is so dry. Montpellier and Nice are much wetter. And who knew that Reims, Strasbourg, and Clermont-Ferrand were so dry?

I think the reason Paris always seemed so rainy to me was that when I lived there, I was always out and about on foot. My shoes and my head seemed to be wet all the time, and I often had a cold. Here in Saint-Aignan, I just don't go out in the rain unless I absolutely have too, and that's not often.