Grow­ing up in Nantes, close to Brit­tany, I became quite famil­iar with rain. A pop­u­lar local joke claims that “in Brit­tany, it only rains twice a year, first from Jan­u­ary to June, and then from June to Decem­ber”. Our win­ters are grey and damp, spring and sum­mer are scat­tered with show­ers and Fall is often syn­onym to thunderstorms.

Yet, once again, the Cana­dian weather sur­prised me. In France, I was used to show­ers, i.e. a lit­tle bit of rain through the day and grey-ish weather. Tor­ren­tial down­pours and vio­lent thun­der­storms are all in all quite rare. On top of my head, I can only remem­ber the two storms of Christ­mas 99, when wind speeds reached around 200 km/h and caused major dam­age across the coun­try.

In Ottawa, it doesn’t rain, it pours. You barely get any warn­ing at all: one minute, the sky is grey and you feel a drop of water, the next one you are as soaked as if you had taken a shower. Sim­i­larly, thun­der­storms can be quite impres­sive in the area: flash floods and power out­ages are not that rare. It’s part of our severe weather-prone coun­try, I guess.

Last Sat­ur­day, I was down­town Ottawa to take pic­tures when it started to rain pour. I couldn’t even cross the street to go inside the Byward Mar­ket — I would have been soaked in sec­onds. So I took shel­ter under one of the fruit stall and snapped pic­tures of peo­ple around me, try­ing to cap­ture the atmos­phere of a rainy day in Ottawa.

You can see the whole Ottawa Sum­mer set here.

White Tulip and Rain Drops

Green Leaf and Rain Drops

Rain Drops

Water­fall!

Rainy Day at the Market

Reflec­tion	Gonna Storm…
Bring Your Rain Boots	Rain at the Park
Come and Get Cool	Drops of Water
Under my Umbrella	All Good!

Girl with Umbrella

Umbrella Dance

Related arti­cles:

1. After The Rain
2. Freez­ing Rain
3. Grey­ish November
4. Ottawa Zom­bie Walk
5. Warm Weather Makes Headlines