Some cities in France are renowned for their pleasant weather, others for their appalling time. Discover the classification of cities where it rains the most. And contrary to popular belief, not all of them are in Brittany!
ÇAy is, fall is well installed! The days are shorter, the sun rarer, and the temperatures fall suddenly. It is time to bring out the sweaters, the large down jackets, the scarves, the cups and, above all, the umbrellas to deal with this change of season. While it becomes increasingly difficult to escape the ambient greyness, some regions are overwhelmed by rain. Not easy to keep morale under these conditions! Some cities are known to be particularly rainy, and as much to say that it is not for everyone!
Inevitably, when we talk about precipitation, we immediately think of Brittany! However, it happens that it is beautiful there several times a day! But the title of the rainy city in France is not based solely on subjective prints or popular sayings, but on specific data. Two rankings were made to determine which one wins the title. The first is based on Météo France data collected between 1991 and 2021 while the second is based on a Holidu study, a tourist site that uses the data from World Weather Online.
According to the results of Météo France, it is Biarritz which obtains the golden palm, with no less than 1,470 mm of rain per year. This is due to the fact that the city is subject to oceanic influences, which bring precipitation, especially in autumn and winter. It is followed very closely by Brest, with 1,230 mm per year. On the other hand, it is the city where it rains most often, with an average of 159 days out of 365, 18 days more than Biarritz. Then come Besançon, Tarbes, Limoges, Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Lorient, Bordeaux, Grenoble and Montélimar, which closes this top 10.
The classification carried out by Holidu is significantly different, since it only takes into account cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. Inevitably, that is already a first sorting! It is then Grenoble which won the Palme d’Or, with about 9 days of rain per month and 5.5 mm of precipitation per day. It is followed by Annecy, Lyon, Mulhouse, Bayonne, Pau, Saint-Étienne, Bourges, Villeneuve-d’Ascq and Limoges.
Beyond cities, some regions are particularly humid. This is the case of the western slopes of the mountain ranges, such as the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Massif Central, because of the reliefs which force the humid air to rise, then to descend by releasing its water in the form of rain. The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is officially the most rainy in France!
If you are allergic to rain, therefore favor cities with a drier climate, like Marseille, which only records an average annual precipitation, or Perpignan, which displays similar data thanks to the Mediterranean climate. Better to provide sunscreen!