Re:Readers reply: when and why did men stop wearing hats?
by tzs on Tuesday August 31, 2021 @09:54PM
(#28375707)
If you live someplace where it rains fairly frequently but usually not too heavily (Seattle, for example [1]) a hat can be quite useful.
The rain here in the Puget Sound area is usual light enough that I'm not going to get too wet when outside for short periods such as going between my car and indoors, taking out the trash, etc except for my glasses.
An umbrella would deal with that but an umbrella occupies a hand.
The rain is usually close enough to vertical that a hat with a brim that is a 1.5 to 2 inches is sufficient to keep the rain off my glasses.
If there is enough wind to make the rain come at an angle, or to threaten to blow off the hat, I have another hat with a chin strap and a wider brim.
[1] Seattle only gets 2 or 3 times as much rain as Los Angeles, and much less than many big eastern or midwestern cities. Seattle's reputation as a rainy city comes from its rain is more uniform than that of cities like Los Angeles--LA gets its rain in a small number of heavy rain events where Seattles has light rain spread out over many many more days, and those eastern cities all get a lot of things that are much worse than rain so it doesn't even occur to people that they are also rainy cities whereas in Seattle rain is about the limit of "bad" weather.
The rain here in the Puget Sound area is usual light enough that I'm not going to get too wet when outside for short periods such as going between my car and indoors, taking out the trash, etc except for my glasses.
An umbrella would deal with that but an umbrella occupies a hand.
The rain is usually close enough to vertical that a hat with a brim that is a 1.5 to 2 inches is sufficient to keep the rain off my glasses.
If there is enough wind to make the rain come at an angle, or to threaten to blow off the hat, I have another hat with a chin strap and a wider brim.
[1] Seattle only gets 2 or 3 times as much rain as Los Angeles, and much less than many big eastern or midwestern cities. Seattle's reputation as a rainy city comes from its rain is more uniform than that of cities like Los Angeles--LA gets its rain in a small number of heavy rain events where Seattles has light rain spread out over many many more days, and those eastern cities all get a lot of things that are much worse than rain so it doesn't even occur to people that they are also rainy cities whereas in Seattle rain is about the limit of "bad" weather.