I work from home most of the time and, from where I’m sitting right now, I can see the main road at the end of our little estate, the houses beyond it, and beyond those the edge of the Crags, a local hill crowned with a line of rocky cliffs.
The view reveals itself in layers. Beyond the houses, a small copse of trees fills the foreground before the land rises gently towards the foot of the Crags.
As I write this the sky is overcast. A light smirr hangs in the air, while low cloud softens the outline of the hill until the cliffs seem to fade into the mist. It’s an entirely ordinary scene and yet quietly beautiful.
All thanks to the Scottish rain.
Scottish rain
Visitors often arrive in Scotland with the impression that we have only one kind of weather. They glance out of the train window somewhere north of the border, watch another shower sweep across the landscape and conclude, with a knowing smile, that it’s raining. Again.
They’re not entirely wrong, it does rain here. A lot.
But to describe Scotland as rainy is rather like describing the sea as wet. It’s accurate but misses the point.
Spend long enough here and you begin to notice that the rain is never simply rain. Sometimes it arrives with purpose, sweeping across the hills in dark curtains that seem visible for miles before they finally reach you. At other times it hangs almost imperceptibly in the air, that fine smirr that leaves no obvious trace until you realise your hair is damp and your jacket has absorbed more water than you thought possible. Then there are those dull dreich days, when the sky settles into a featureless grey and the world feels as though someone has turned the saturation down, softening every edge without dulling the beauty.
Along the coast, the haar has a personality all of its own. It advances, slowly and deliberately, swallowing fields, roads and landmarks as though blurring them from existence then moments later it can retreat into nothing. To someone seeing it for the first time it can feel almost supernatural. To those of us who have lived alongside it, it’s simply another chapter in the day’s weather.
The closest I’ve ever experienced was the San Franciscan fog that rolled into the city one morning, catching me so by surprise that I had to hustle into a nearby Gap to buy a jumper to counter the sudden drop in temperature.
Our vocabulary
Yes, we have many kinds of rain in Scotland, and just as many words to describe it. At times it can seem like an obsession, but I don’t think that’s what it is, I think our knowledge and descriptions of the Scottish rain are about familiarity.
Because it rains all the time, we notice the rain in all its forms and we’ve developed a wonderfully rich vocabulary to describe it. Not because we’re obsessed with the weather —although, if I’m being honest, perhaps we are a little— but because we recognise that those differing forms require a precision of language.
A sailor sees subtleties in the sea that I will never recognise. A farmer reads a hillside differently from someone passing through on holiday. Gardeners know the difference between rain that nourishes and rain that destroys. Everyone develops their own vocabulary for the things that form everyday life.
Generation after generation have lived beneath these endlessly changing skies and we’ve learned to pay attention.
Living with our weather also teaches you that certainty is temporary. A grey morning doesn’t necessarily become a wet afternoon, just as we never quite trust that burst of sunshine. We learn to read the sky almost without thinking, to notice tiny shifts in the wind or the colour of the clouds. Perhaps, over time, that habit of observation extends beyond the weather itself.
I sometimes wonder whether that way of seeing extends beyond the weather and into who we are.
We are our rain
From a distance Scotland is often painted in broad strokes, but ours is a nation of contradictions: we can be deeply reserved and remarkably welcoming, gently self-deprecating yet fiercely proud, reluctant to boast but quick to defend the places we love. Like the weather, we resist simple descriptions.
And anyone who has spent time here knows those broad strokes only scratch the surface. Our reserve gives way to generosity. Our self-deprecating humour is constant and self-knowing. Conversations that begin cautiously end with stories, laughter and invitations for another pint.
Like our weather, we’re rarely just one thing.
I don’t mean to suggest that centuries of rain have somehow created the Scottish psyche. Human beings are more complicated than that, and cultures are shaped by countless influences far greater than the climate. Yet it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that living alongside unpredictability teaches its own quiet lessons.
You learn not to postpone life while waiting for perfect conditions. You go for the walk anyway. You cycle knowing there’s every chance you’ll come home soaked. You pack the waterproof even when the forecast insists you’ll never need it.
And when the rain arrives —as it inevitably does— you shrug, zip your jacket a little higher and carry on, because that’s simply what you do.
Last week, as Becca and I headed out to Bellahouston park for a gig, we wore our sensible shoes —thousands of people trampling on wet grass means lots of mud— and our waterproof jackets. I even had two foldaway waterproof ponchos in my pockets in case things got really bad. Of course the weather decided to clear up and it was a lovely warm evening, with only a gentle breeze carrying the clouds across the fading evening sky.
It doesn’t matter what age you are either, our memories are full of rainy days, of puddles and wet cuffs. Even on a recent holiday in the Highlands, despite enjoying periods of sunshine, we had two days of rain spells. One included the family, including Jack, cycling 5 miles to the nearest town from the campsite. Four seasons in one day as we went through an overcast sky, through a light shower, to horizontal hailstones and, by the time we reached our first destination, glorious sunshine broke through.
We didn’t stop or turn back, we all had our waterproofs on, because it’s just what we do. Jack barely seemed to notice. I guess to him it was just part of the adventure.
But then, as my Dad used to say, “skin is waterproof”.
I sometimes wonder whether that’s where resilience really comes from. Not from the dramatic moments that define a life, but from hundreds of ordinary ones. From pulling on a waterproof jacket instead of cancelling the walk, from the basic acceptance that plans change, that paths become muddy and skies can darken without warning. Maybe resilience isn’t something we’re born with at all. Maybe it’s something quietly rehearsed on rainy Sunday mornings.
There’s something comforting about that thought.
Rain isn’t an interruption to life.
It is life, it gives us life.
It’s never just rain
Perhaps that’s why I rarely resent our wonderful weather. Rain softens the hills into countless gentle shades of green. It feeds the burns that tumble through glens, fills the lochs that reflect the changing sky and leaves behind that unmistakable smell of wet earth that somehow feels like home. Remove the rain and Scotland would undoubtedly still be beautiful, but it would no longer feel quite like itself.
My home city, Glasgow, is known as the Dear Green Place for good reason, the parks and green spaces soften the concrete sprawl of the city centre. Yet it’s our local climate that makes those spaces so alive with plant life, it’s the rain that makes it green.
Maybe we Scots are much the same.
At first glance we often appear reserved because that’s all distance allows you to see. Only when we slow down and really pay attention do the subtle distinctions emerge, the ones that language struggles to capture.
You have to be here to notice it, to recognise that the things we dismiss as ordinary often reveal the most about the places we love and the people who call them home. Rain just happens to be the lens through which Scotland has taught me that lesson.
And perhaps that’s why, whenever someone tells me Scotland has only one kind of weather, I can’t help but smile.
Tomorrow morning I’ll sit at this desk and look out towards the Crags once more. They may stand sharp beneath a clear blue sky, disappear behind driving rain, or slowly dissolve behind a veil of smirr and low cloud. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, I’ll still think it’s beautiful.
Because it’s never just rain. It’s part of the landscape, part of our language and, whether we realise it or not, part of us.
What are your thoughts?