Making sense of the weather: dwelling and weathering on Canada’s rain coast

Drawing on ethnographic data collected throughout British Columbia’s coastal regions, in this article, the authors examine people’s experiences of ordinary weather. Data show how people experience weather multisensorially and how the weather plays a central role in the way individuals and collectives define sense of place. Experiences of weather, the authors argue, are a reflexive and active form of dwelling. A focus on skillful embodied practices and dwelling highlights how weathering is a process through which people make and remake places and shape their sense of self. The authors conceptualize the practice of weathering as a form of somatic work and explain how through somatic work places and weather emerge within a performative ecology of movements.