Sure, Bergen is rainy – but how much it drizzles, drips, or pours depends on where you measure. The variation is enormous. But let’s start with the city centre of Bergen, at the weather station at Florida.
The official figure from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute shows that 2,250 mm of precipitation falls here each year – that’s two meters and twenty-five centimeters.
This is the normal for the period 1961–1990. The new normal for 1991–2020 is about 10% wetter, but to make comparisons with other places easier, we’ll use the old normal here.
The temperature normal shows above-zero temperatures every month, even in winter. So, almost all the precipitation in Bergen falls as rain.
For comparison, Oslo gets a mere 763 mm, Kristiansand 1,380 mm, Stavanger 1,250 mm, Trondheim 895 mm, and Tromsø 1,031 mm. Barely a drizzle compared to Bergen – the true rain city. Not only in Norway, but in all of Europe, by a comfortable margin.
Some claim that it always rains in Bergen. That’s almost true. There’s some precipitation on 242 of the year’s 365 days, but autumn and winter are the wettest seasons, with between 15 and 21 days of rain per month from September to March.
If you want sunshine in Bergen, your best chance is to visit in May.
Why is it so wet?
Most of the precipitation arrives with the low-pressure systems sweeping in from the west. Eighty percent of the rain comes with winds from the south to the west, and in Bergen, “southerly wind and water” are two sides of the same coin.
When the moist air moves inland, it is lifted by the mountains. As the air rises, its temperature drops, and at a certain point, it can no longer hold all its moisture. The water vapor condenses into droplets that splash down onto the cobblestones.
Enormous variation
The city of Bergen is large – much larger than the area between the city’s seven mountains.
The municipality stretches from the salty sea in the west to the nearly thousand-meter-high Gullfjellet in the east. Since the terrain determines where the rain falls most, the variation within the municipality is enormous.
The wettest Bergen residents must endure almost two meters more rain than the driest.
The clever ones make sure to live where there are no high mountains to the east. If you live in Kokstad, not far from Flesland a few kilometers south of the city, you get about 1,900 mm of rain per year.
If you live along fashionable Fjellveien beneath Mount Fløyen, it’s 2,350 mm. That difference alone equals half of Trondheim’s annual rainfall.
Laksevåg, on the west side of Byfjorden, manages with 2,200 mm, while Sandviken on the east side gets 200 mm more.
More than three and a half meters
The farther east you go, the more it rains. The highest precipitation is recorded toward Gullfjellet. At the end of Hausdalen, rainfall reaches 3,100 mm, while Brekkedalen receives 3,600 mm.
Perhaps that’s why there aren’t any Bergen residents living there at all?
