I quickly learned that
(1) actually staying dry all the time here was hopeless unless I carried the umbrella all the time, and
(2) most of the time if I forget it the rain just got me slightly damp which wasn't all that bad (except for my glasses), and
(3) when the rain was intense enough that I would not want to brave it without my umbrella, it usually only took a few minutes before it was back to the slightly damp kind of rain
and so really only needed it to keep the rain off my glasses.
That was easy to address with a hat with a brim that was a two or three inches wide. Occasionally the rain is accompanied by wind, which led to a second hat that had a wider brim (to deal with rain coming in at an angle) and a chin strap.
As someone who recently lived in north GA, now temporarily in Florida, it's quite different too.
What someone would call a rainy day in GA ('I wake up, it's raining, and it rains all day') FL gets... maybe 4 non-hurricane days a year?
In contrast, rain in FL terms ('It's sunny, then the sky opens up and pours for 30 minute intervals between 3-6pm, between and after which it's also sunny') is essentially most of the summer.
To be fair, it reminds me of the videos people have of throwing water in the air and it freezing before it lands. That sounds fake just typing it. :)
That is relatively rare in Seattle area. It is really more of a mist most of the time. Where I live there are so many giant trees that even when it's "raining" you often stay pretty dry.
EDIT: I looked up NYC and the precipitation (Wikipedia lists precipitation and snow) is 49.52 inches. (I thought of a similar conversation from many years ago on the NYC or some other East Coast city compared to Seattle.)
Seattle has 156.2 rainy days. Not listed for NYC. I guess a lot less.
Which sounds like a lot to me, but who knows.
Once or twice a year, it'll rain for 48 hours straight and dump three inches of water on us, but the rest of the time, it's like unpleasantly heavy fog
The Olympic or Cascade Mountain Ranges that roughly bracket Seattle get most of the actual precipitation. Even Snoqualmie which is right next to Seattle but a little higher gets ~ double the actual precipitation. Snoqualmie Pass (only ~ 3000 ft) nearby gets ~ 100 inches of precipitation, and 400 inches of snow on an average year.
The precipitation in seattle (mist) and the precipitation in nyc ( rain ) are two different animals. For example, pretty much everyone in nyc owns an umbrella. Pretty much nobody in seattle owns an umbrella. Why would that be if it 'rains' more in seattle?
It's probably true that seattle gets more precipitation because it's constantly misty for 6 or 7 months. You can go weeks without seeing the sun in seattle. In nyc, the precipitation is mostly in the form of actual rain and downpours. You can dumped on and the clouds clear. Maybe a system will bring downpours for a couple of days. But it always clears. You rarely get dumped on in seattle and if so, for a short time frame. And the skies never clear. It just remains and annoys you with mist.
> Seattle has 156.2 rainy days.
Nope. Not rainy days. Maybe 6 rainy days and 150 misty days.
In the northeast, you can actual weather. In the west coast, it's flimsy weather. I've no other word to describe it. People who experienced both will get what I'm trying to say.