Should you walk or run in the rain if you want to stay dry?
Do You Get Wetter Walking or Running in The Rain?
You finish dinner at a restaurant, and it’s suddenly pouring. You gaze at your car parked not so far away. Is it better to walk or run in the rain?
Believe it or not, scientists have debated this for years. If you run you get there faster, so less rain hits you. But meanwhile you’re slamming more frontwise into the droplets, making them preferentially strike your chest and legs. If you’d walked, they’d mostly hit your head and shoulders, which offer less surface.
Is this logic correct? Do you get wetter walking or running in the rain?
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In the late eighties, an Italian physicist calculated that running through a rainstorm would keep you 10% drier than walking. Barely any difference. Hardly worth the effort, especially since you’d be more likely to slip and fall. Then, in 1995, a British researcher decided that walking is better because the drenching of your entire front side would negate the slight benefit of getting there faster.
The next year, two North Carolina climatologists put the whole issue to an actual test. They each wore identical clothing and water-measuring equipment. One of them ran 100 meters through a downpour while the other simultaneously walked. Result? The one who walked was 40% wetter.
Bottom line: Run to the car.
But you already instinctively knew that, didn’t you?
Now, did you know water shouldn’t be wet? I’ll explain why water—beyond its obvious life-giving properties—is truly astonishing.
Bob Berman
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Walking is best and safest. Walking through a parking lot or across the street you are walking on a thin, sometimes thick, film of oil from autos and trucks and the rain lifts some of it up so you can slip and fall and get hurt.
dancing in the rain is best !
I say walk in the rain and enjoy it if it is not a deluge where you could drown if walking, but if you are going to run be sure to have good shoes for running in the rain or you could suffer something worse than getting wet. I love rain walks. It is very refreshing as it is meant to be.
I think it is easier to be watchful when you are walking. Check the weather forecast before you leave home.
I can't believe scientists have time to discuss this! Who pays them for this!
Simple curiosity is the reason humans have come so far. Never lose that.
That's what science is all about. That's what scientists do.
I say walk and enjoy playing in the rain...this way you slow down and what is it going to hurt if you get wet anyway? It's not like we melt.
i think this is a good paper about this problem
google:
Run or walk in the rain? (Orthogonal projected area of ellipsoid) figshare
Forget speed; instead measure time. Slower you walk, longer the exposure, wetter you get. Runner will be drier.
