rain in sunnydale

stormwolfe

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so here's a question for you. how often did it rain in sunnydale, and when?
I can think of a definate one in 'Surprise' and i think it rained in buffy vs. dracula but i'm not sure of that.
 
Yeah, you'd think it would have rained more in the Hell Mouth than it did. But then it would have been a bit more difficult to film and what not. I think it did rain a few more times than just the ones you mentioned...but I'm not one of these crazy detail experts...Where's N4H...
 
I cant remember. Although in the book "The Lost Slayer" it mentions that its an overcast morning and I think it was Buffy who thought "people in this town have the same attitude towards bad weather as they do demons, they just pretend like it never happened."
 
Well, from S6 on, Sunnydale is apparently smack bang in the middle of the desert so... One of Faith's dreams has rain, does that count? 😀
 
It snowed in Amends, does that count?
Also didnt it rain in 'the body' when they were in the car? (xand and an)
 
Aaah I can't remember rain in The Body....my memory is terrible though.

It sure didn't seem to rain often there... but I don't know Cali weather that well..is a lack of rain normal? Because I know the northern Canadian cousin British Columbia gets TONS of rain. TONS. As does Seattle I think.
 
Jenny said:
It sure didn't seem to rain often there... but I don't know Cali weather that well..is a lack of rain normal? Because I know the northern Canadian cousin British Columbia gets TONS of rain. TONS. As does Seattle I think.

Seattle does, apparently a lot. Ahh what you learn from Frasier. The Body didn't, not the point you were saying. http://www.dumb-inc.co.nz/delusions/caps/thebody/caps1/body251.jpg Another sunny day in Sunnydale.

Was just thinking 7.01 or 7.02 does, but then remembered it was the Giles and Willow scenes in England. Curses.
 
In this thread from a few months back (https://www.buffy-boards.com/showthread.php?t=9464&highlight=sunnydale+location) we sort of decided that Sunnydale was somewhere near Santa Barbara CA but was one of those kinda elastic fictional towns (a bit like Springfield in The Simpsons 🙂) which expand to be close to the desert one week and then next week have a large dock area and beach. I reckon that the weather could be just as elastic to suit the plot.

Do you think we've invented a new literary concept here? Fictional Location/Climate Elasticity, anyone? (Copyright Pointy Productions😉)

BTW HERE is a rainfall chart for downtown Santa Barbara if it helps any 🙂
 
L
Lethe
Hmm-mm! And thanks for the link!
California, if my brief periods of wakefullness during Geography serves, is in patches a desert state. Local government has a lot of trouble with the expense of water, and they have to do a lot of pumping and piping. Some areas are totally arid compared to others that are relatively green. LA gets about 14 inches of rain a year, compared to Seattle's 34. Seattle is sort of known for it's high rainfall (Though not as much as Vancouver) So, while a desert town would explain the low rainfall, S1 to S4 Sunnydale didn't give that impression.
 
It did definitely rain during This Year's Girl but that was during the dream sequence where Faith emerges from the grave then wakes up so I'm not sure that dreaming it's raining in Sunnydale counts. However, later in the ep. when Faith confronts 'B' at UC Sunnydale the ground was wet like it had been raining so...does it count?
 
Jenny said:
Aaah I can't remember rain in The Body....my memory is terrible though.

It sure didn't seem to rain often there... but I don't know Cali weather that well..is a lack of rain normal? Because I know the northern Canadian cousin British Columbia gets TONS of rain. TONS. As does Seattle I think.
It does not rain a lot in Cali at lest were Sunnydale would be. It's in the middle of the desert. And we get rain 10 times a year at the max. So far From Aug. 2003 till Aug. 2004 I think it rained once.
 
Yea just because Darla Sleep with Angel it starts raining at that very secound. very coincidental..
 
Haha, Rainydale.....spin off? Maybe it could be the suburb of Cleveland where the scoobs live?

Maybe the writers just don't like rain. I remember both Buffy and Faith, when asked how they were feeling replied, "Right as rain - whatever that means".
 
Just in case there is any doubt... The big reason it doesn't rain much in Sunnydale is because rain is an absolute pain in the arse to film. It causes a lot more bother than you might think...

For one thing, you can't heat a wet set or it steams. Wet + Cold = Cranky actors. The water makes make up, set paint and occasionally hair dye, run, making continuity nearly impossible (See how many phlubs you can spot in the last minutes of 5x5 and the start of Sanctuary) Water damages interior sets irreperably (The US version of The Ring has water stains all over Noahs apartment long before his visitor arrives) To make falling water properly visible, you either have to have lots of it, or you add milk. Lots of water is really, really noisy (Check out any BVTS or Angel scene with falling water and you'll notice some bad overdubbing.) and milky water gets gross. You also need rain rigs, and it's unsanitary to just dump the water over the set and then dump it back onto your actors, so you have to keep supplying the rigs with clean water. And all that water has to go somewhere, meaning you need to construct a drain system and make the set completely water proof. All that expensive equipment (Boom mikes, light rigs, cameras...) has to be waterproofed so it doesn't get damaged, but you also have to make sure it doesn't get into the groundwater and kill your actors (Sigourney Weaver very nearly electrocuted herself by grabbing equipment while she was filming the underwater scenes in A:R)

So... lots of money, possibly dead actors. You really want to be sure about a rain scene before you include it. 😀 Or, alternatively, you can make your actress wet and add CGI rain, like I'm nearly a hundred percent sure they did in This Years Girl...
 
You dont have to have it rain on them. They could be looking out the window, or under a umbrella/shelter like on Tru Calling. And I remember watching The X-files the other day and they had a scene and it was so wet and I was like thinking how could you do that just act out in the rain cause it must be hard. And on newlyweds, they had this scene with it, and they just kept on complaining it was too freezing. So yea your right in a sence.
 
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