As a glance through its Wiki page will testify, March 1st is not an especially significant day of the year. But to me it always feels as though we turn a corner at this moment – decisively away from Winter and towards the Spring.
Given that Spring came a little earlier to Furillen this year, I thought it might be nice to celebrate my own small ‘first day of Spring’ moment with a gift from a Londoner to everyone who visits the sim.
I made it rain.
This isn’t – it must be said – your typical London rain. Believe it or not, on average London actually has less rain annually – 29 inches – than, say, Zurich (42.5 inches), Amsterdam (31 inches) or even Milan (39 inches).
What London gets is drizzle, which can go on for days, adding little to the annual rainfall figures but making a mess of your clothes and hair.
(Well not quite like this, but he was the best Dr Who and I just had to share this gif.)
The playwright Peter Shaffer once said that if New York was an oil painting, London was a watercolour. I see what he means about the water …
At Furillen we have honest rain. Or to put this another way …
… it is absolutely pissing down.
So being what they are, Furillenites have celebrated in the only way they know how … by taking some great rainy pictures …
… and by holding a special ‘flash(flood?)mob’, and taking some terrific pictures of that, too …
Just to be clear, the rain won’t be a permanent feature of the sim. The sun will return just as suddenly as the rain appeared.
But bear with me over the next few days as I make this rain work as well as I can – reducing the lag, sorting out the soundscape (we have some very soothing rain sounds and some great thunder echoing around).
I also want to pack everything away into a rezzer so that – as in first life – the Furillen weather can change in an instant.
One or two of you have asked why didn’t I use a weather system. I actually tested everything. On the basis of those tests, the rain I am using is – I think – as good as it gets for the effect I was looking for.
So if you haven’t seen it yet, do visit soon.
There is even a free umbrella.
