Weather feelings
What is a pluviophile?
A pluviophile is someone who loves rain: the sound on the roof, the grey light, the smell after a dry spell, the excuse to cancel everything. Most people check the forecast hoping for sun. A pluviophile checks it hoping for the opposite.
Signs of a pluviophile
- Rain on the window counts as a plan for the evening.
- A cancelled barbecue feels like a small personal win.
- A week of sunshine in the forecast gets a quiet sigh.
- The smell of rain after a dry spell is near the top of the list of favourite smells.
Where the word comes from
From Latin pluvia, rain, plus -phile, lover. Dictionary.com dates the word to the early 1990s, and it spread online as a label for people who love rainy days. There is a biology sense too: an organism that thrives where it rains a lot.
By the numbers
The best US city for a pluviophile, by our count, is Astoria: about 196 wet days a year at its weather station. The worst is Las Vegas, with about 26.
What I think
Pluviophile: someone who looks at a grey sky and sees a personality.
Pluviophiles do not need a weather app. They need a weather app to be wrong in their favour.
Pluviophiles are the only people who read “90% chance of rain” as good news.
Every pluviophile has a playlist of rain sounds and a quiet grudge against the sun.
More weather lovers and haters
Sources: Dictionary.com (pluviophile, first recorded 1990 to 1995); Wiktionary for the biology sense. Rainy days: NOAA daily records, 1991 to 2020.