Drizzle

Drizzle is rain that has not fully committed. Its drops are less than half a millimetre across and fall at about the speed of someone deciding whether to bring a coat.^[1]

Drizzle is described as “not really raining” by 94% of the people it is currently soaking, a figure that rises to 99% among people who have just left the house without an umbrella.

Measurement

Drizzle is too light to register in most rain gauges, which wait for it all day and record nothing. Instead, the Institute of Damp stands a volunteer in a cardigan in a field and reads the drizzle off the cardigan, in units of damp (d). A light drizzle is 2 d and a persistent drizzle 7 d; at 10 d the cardigan is wrung out and the reading starts again.^[2]

Duration

Drizzle has no known natural end. Where a downpour is over in minutes, drizzle can last a whole afternoon, a whole Saturday or a whole holiday, in direct proportion to how much was paid for the holiday.

• Shower: rain that gets it over with.
• Downpour: rain showing off.
• Drizzle: rain that has settled in and found the remote.
• Fog: drizzle that couldn’t be bothered to fall.

See also

• Rain – drizzle that made up its mind
• Fog – drizzle that stayed up
• Umbrella – at home, as always
• Petrichor – the smell of a small rain

References

1. Mizzle, M. (1996). Not Really Raining. Damp Press.
2. Institute of Damp (2014). “Cardigan Readings, 2004–2014”. Wrung out 4,112 times.
3. Overcast, S. (2008). “Has It Stopped?”. No.