Rain & Temperature

As I write this some sunlight is coming out of the cloudy sky. It’s cloudy at least every other day here in Rennes. I read online before I arrived that the weather is similar to Seattle. I’ve never been to Seattle, but I feel like I agree with that statement. It rains here quite a bit, but it’s bearable…at least to me. Most of the time the rain doesn’t last the whole day and when it does rain, it’s more misty or the rain drops are small. They were smaller in comparison to what my friends and I experienced in London. Don’t get me wrong it can pour here sometimes.

The temperature, since I’ve arrived, has ranged from 30 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This week it’s been more between the 40s and 50s lately. Like the weather in Pennsylvania during the transition into spring, the temperature fluctuates a little throughout the day. It can be either sunny or cloudy in the morning and then be the complete opposite by the afternoon The wind influences what the temperature feels like. It doesn’t really snow in this region, which I found a little surprising, so it doesn’t really experience all four seasons unlike Pennsylvania.

The wind here can be a little crazy sometimes. The palm tree outside one of the windows of the apartment was blowing all over the place when the wind was really bad one day. The palm tree outside the window gives the illusion that it’s warmer outside than it actually is. I’m not really sure why, but a lot of palm trees are planted around the city. I saw on one of my friend’s Instagram story a lot of large trees had been ripped out of the ground and fallen into the street. This only happened one time so far, but you can imagine how bad the wind was that day. The rain and wind is pretty common throughout Bretagne (Brittany) because the region is pretty much surrounded by the sea. Mount Saint Michel is only about an hour and a half or two away from Rennes and the wind there was really strong.

The Rennais.es don’t really mind when the weather is bad. A lot of the time I don’t even see a lot of umbrellas. They just continue what they are doing. I also don’t really see rain coats. Most of the time they wear wool/pea coats or winter coats. When it was colder in January, I saw a lot of women wearing short fur coats. I feel like the metro helps with this because we are able to get to one place to another fairly quickly and only be in the rain for a few minutes. A lot of the time the cafés or restaurants have tents outside. The weather doesn’t ruin their plans to go out. It’s pretty normalized if you are a little wet from the rain when you get somewhere. With all of this rain the Rennais.es really appreciate it when the weather is really nice and sunny. It’s honestly really nice here when it’s nicer out.

Here are some quotes from some of my friends about their (somewhat comedic) perspectives on the weather in Rennes:

Claire (Arkansas): “The weather is bad. It’s cold. It changes really quickly. The French think it’s colder than it actually is. They need to visit the northern US. (Claire goes to school in Indiana) It’s very misty. Sometimes sunny for 20-25 minutes.

Cally (Minnesota): “Cloudy and windy. The French think it’s FREEZING. My host mom always talks about how cold it is. When you look at the weather channel, Bretagne is always windy. It’s cold but not as cold as the French think. It’s more miserable than cold. It was sunnier and nicer in northern Scotland…” (My comment: I’m usually colder than my house mother sometimes, unless she’s lying about not being cold.)

Bri (New Jersey): “When I was in Dinard for the weekend, it went from being mild and sunny to windy and cold with hail and back to being nice within half an hour. I told that to a French person and they were like « yeah, typical Bretagne »”