“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”

Don’t you believe it, regardless of what Eliza Doolittle may have drilled into your head in My Fair Lady.

Lots of rain in Spain – as in Portugal – falls all over the place.

Especially, wherever we happen to be.

For those new to Iberia, the rain takes some getting used to (as does the sun). Because of their grit and wherewithal, they’re quite different from what we’d experienced in the USA.

We’ve lived in places from Northeast Wisconsin (Sturgeon Bay-Door County) to the First Coast of Southeast Florida (Jacksonville), and have dealt with nasty weather—both bitterly cold and infernally hot.

But, it’s different here in Spain and Portugal.

On the west side of the pond, we were accustomed to rainy days throughout the year, regardless of the season. Spring, summer, fall, and winter … each had periods of rain awash with sunny skies. Here, however, on the pond’s eastern front, there’s a rainy “season” and a blazingly hot one.

Both are extreme and extensive.

Day after day, for weeks on end, we’ll see little or no sign of rain during the sunny season in Spain and Portugal. Contrarily, during their time, we have dismal gray skies and lingering rain that never seems to end.

I respect the rain, especially in places where we live off the land’s produce. And who doesn’t? So, I’m not really complaining. But, hey, if we can’t groan about the weather, what else can’t we gripe about?

The rain, itself, is of a different sort; it has its own shelf life here. Rain cycles incessantly from cold, bone-chilling downpours to storms, showers, and/or drizzles … then, rinse and repeat: again and again and again. Even without extended exposure to it, you feel as if pneumonia is more than presumed. Duvet-diving weather, it requires an air conditioner inverter turned on to its “heat” settings, a wood burner or pellet stove, and an electric blanket (upper or lower) plugged into service.

Lower?

Yep: in Portugal, our favorite electrodomésticos stores sell electric blankets that wrap around the mattress beneath us, instead of heating the top blanket which we pull over ourselves.

The weather is fickle and you never know when it will spike ten degrees or drop twenty during a 24-hour period. So, be sure to pack accordingly. Plan to layer. One day I wear a T-shirt; the next a long-sleeve shirt; the day after that, a T-shirt underneath a long-sleeve shirt; and, following that, a sweater over a long sleeve shirt and T-shirt.

Summers are hot, scorchingly so. We’re talking about temperatures rising to and then hovering in the high 90s (F)/40s (C) range … in the shade (if you can find any) … for weeks, even months, on end.

That’s why we have siestas|sestas here–although the Portuguese will tell you that they really don’t have sestas … just long lunches.

Not (just) to relax, but to escape the ravages of the weather.

We don’t have central heating or air conditioning in our village homes and town houses. Fireplaces and wood burners, gas or electric heaters, keep us warm, room by room. Venture away from climate-controlled spaces, however, and put your hand on the walls.They’re wet … dripping cold-hearted sweat!

And, woe is me if the flame on our gas-fired water heater should go out because of the rain or wind that often accompanies this intoxicated weather. Especially during winter’s drafts.

We just replaced old, single pane glass, wood-framed windows and bedroom balcony doors with new ones of textured duplex glass, framed by vinyl and aluminum. Next on our bucket list, we bought and installedl a new water heater which, currently, is strategically located on the terrace right outside our bathroom. Thankfully, we’ve replaced our old water heater in Portugal with a new electric one.

“O gás é para cozinhar, mas apenas elétrico para aquecer a água,” the lady who owns our corner mini-marked insisted. (Gas is for cooking; to heat water, only electric will do.)

She’s right! Not only don’t we run out of hot water at the most inopportune moments anymore, but our energy bills have been reduced substantially. Between cooking and heating water, we’d been going through about three propane canisters per month in Portugal, where they cost at least ten euros more per canister than the same ones in Spain. Plus, our added electric charges for heating water electrically are less than we’d been paying for three monthly propane canisters–especially since we put them on timers!

Another tip: Don’t forget to put one or more “draft dodgers” on the list for those exterior doors under which creep currents of air (hot and cold). Houses in Portuguese villages and Spanish towns usually have been built out of concrete and cement, with no insulation, and at odd angles. Rare is the door that meets the ground squarely.

Mother Nature has issues here, even as she we does in the USA. Hurricanes. Wildfires. Floods. Earthquakes. They’re all increasing in frequency and intensity, looming larger and lasting longer. During October last year, Portugal was smacked by a rare Atlantic hurricane – the most powerful to hit the country since 1842 – which made landfall near Lisbon and then took a beeline directly to our home in Castelo Branco, close to the Spanish border.

Spain has been deluged by flooding that turns creeks into mighty rivers, carrying away heavy vehicles and causing landslides along the way. Areas of seismic activity have produced jolts of earthquakes too close for comfort to our little place in the sun.

In Portugal, we hadn’t yet recovered from the encroaching forest fires, when 800 people — Portuguese activists, surfers, fishers, youths and supporters from around the world — came together at Cova do Vapor beach outside Lisbon, where the Tagus River meets the Atlantic, to protest the country’s plans for offshore oil drilling and inland fracking.

Still, there’s something quaint and comforting about dealing with the weather in old-fashioned ways: locals providing for neighbors in any ways possible, fanning themselves with papers, and moving to the lower levels of their homes (where it’s cooler) in the heat. Lighting fires and bundling up to keep warm in the winter. Shrugging off the weather by remembering that, after all, tomorrow is another day.

Shared here are personal observations, experiences, and happenstance that actually occurred to us as we moved from the USA to begin a new life in Portugal and Spain. Collected and compiled in EXPAT: Leaving the USA for Good, the book is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions from Amazon and most online booksellers.