“It was really apparent when cycling from my home in Edinburgh that it could be dry if you headed west, but wet if you headed east, and vice versa,” says artist Rebecca Kaye, alias Ploterre, who produces pieces that involve plotting data in creative ways. This observation led her to wonder if it was always raining somewhere.
Kaye gathered Met Office precipitation records for 366 different locations across the British Isles. The resulting piece, Always Raining Somewhere, has 122 rows representing the days from 1 October to 31 January – the wettest period, says Kaye – and 90 columns for the years since 1934.
Faint diagonal lines show light rainfall, denser lines are heavier rainfall. The overall effect resembles looking out a window on a rainy day. However, a few gaps show that there are a small number of dry days. It is only almost always raining somewhere.
The image also illustrates gradually changing weather patterns.
“You can see the pattern getting darker at the bottom right,” says Kaye. “It looks to be getting wetter later on in more recent years.”
Kaye says she wants to make data more human, noting that weather observations were originally spurred by the sort of curiosity behind her own musings.
“It makes the numbers less dry – pun intended,” she says.
