What is wrong with some of you?

This would be a lot funnier if there were enough pixels to differentiate the colors in the legend...

Sorry, it's moldy
The devil one is green, I think the Bible Belt is just barely tinged green.

The devil is married?

To a women no less
"His wife" could be a....let's say, "euphemism" for something else. In which case, that ain't rainwater falling.....
- He beat pee pee?
A few minutes before the services started, the townspeople were sitting in their pews and talking. Suddenly, Satan appeared at the front of the church. Everyone started screaming and running for the front entrance, trampling each other in a frantic effort to get away from evil incarnate.

Soon everyone had exited the church except for one elderly gentleman who sat calmly in his pew without moving, seeming oblivious to the fact that God's ultimate enemy was in his presence.

So Satan walked up to the old man and said, "Don't you know who I am?" The man replied, "Yep, sure do."

"Aren't you afraid of me?" Satan asked.

"Nope, sure ain't," said the man.

"Don't you realize I can kill you with a word?" asked Satan.

"Don't doubt it for a minute," returned the old man, in an even tone.

"Did you know that I could cause you profound, horrifying, physical AGONY... for all eternity?" persisted Satan.

"Yep," was the calm reply.

"And you're still not afraid?" asked Satan.

"Nope."

More than a little perturbed, Satan asked, "Well, why aren't you afraid of me?"

The man calmly replied, "Been married to your sister for the last 48 years!!..

I’m from the Deep South. You couldn’t tell by my accent. I moved away for college and lived overseas and on both coasts. I didn’t know what a “sun shower” was until I was in my mid/late twenties and said “the devil is beating his wife” in front of my friends. That’s the only term for it I had ever heard up to that point.

damn. i was like 55% certain that this was a shitpost and no one actually said that until i read your comment. we almost got a shitpost on c/shitpost. maybe it's not too late to get a meme on c/meme
Are you me? This is very similar to my story regarding this phrase. I have just heard the phrase associated with the situation. Not that rain falling while the sun is out is CALLED the devil is beating his wife. Rather, it's just the indicator somehow.
- Yes, that is why it happens

Devil beating his wife sounds deep south as fuck...

This is a terrific example of where a choropleth (Ideally by county) would have been much more effective than a heat map.

It's worth noting that the Times released this tool a decade ago. IIRC, around 2015 there was also a push for better colorblind friendly color palettes, especially on the heat map space (I remember watching a matplotlib demo, maybe, with viridis support). While there's many visualization practices we do better at now, and while this could be due for a redux, I still think it"s one of the best interactives to date. It's an OG for sure.
- That's fun, and it's a much better use of heatmap since it's just a binary scale (least-most similar). When we're showing discrete options rather than a continuous "similarity" we don't want to use heatmaps because they cause undesirable blurring.
  
  Really what the OP is trying to do is show which areas use which phrases. A heatmap could have been used where we have multiple visualizations - one for each phrase - using "Popularity" to show smooth distribution. I assume that the source data is not by county level and instead aggregated so the choropleth never would have worked great.
Fuck yeah let's convert some sunlight to .. oh you said.. nevermind

I grew up in the CA bay area and always called them sunshowers. I didn't make that up: I called them sunshowers when I was a kid because the people around me called them sunshowers.

As an aside, I also taught linguistics at the university level for about 10 years. I do question the accuracy of many of Katz's charts because they very often do not match people's expectations, and beyond the level of "you expected this because you didn't know any better". I would take them with a grain of salt. That's not really a dig on Katz, either: difficult to study anything at this scale.

Same for AZ. This map sucks.

Funny, but we use the same thing about the Devil beating his wife in Romania as well. At least in Transylvania we do. It's surprising to see this being used in the US as well. I wonder where it originated from.

Apparently the first time this was used was in France 1703. More info here: https://www.theidioms.com/the-devil-is-beating-his-wife/

That's interesting... because those green areas are all old French settlements.

I believe it's a Golden Shower

no, that’s just a golf resort in South Florida and one hotel room in Moscow.

In russian we have a phrase "грибной дождь" (mushroom rain) for light warm rain in the sunshine.

It's the best weather for mushroom growth and is therefore a sign to go harvest them in the woods soon.

I like this a lot. It's cute-sounding and has a history.

Grew up in Georgia. My mom would refer to it as the devil beating his wife. She got it from her mom who presumably got it from her parents. I have no idea why that expression, never got an answer for that.

Here is the answer https://www.theidioms.com/the-devil-is-beating-his-wife/

What is this "rain" you speak of.

I'm Florida we call it 4pm.

I've mostly heard some variation on sunshower in Texas because while they're not common, they're not super rare either. We also rarely get "sun-derstorms" (dunno what else to call it) in Texas.

Monkey's wedding.

I thought this was the only one. TIL....

Fox marries Wolf's wife

I hadn't heard the Wolf's wife part, but I'd always heard said that it was a "Fox's wedding". Which is pretty similar. I've heard sunshower and that "The Devil's beating his wife" but the fox one was more fun so it stuck with me.

This map is inaccurate. I'm from Arizona and "sunshower" is commonly used here.

Yup. SE Texas and it's "Devil is beating his wife" here.
I'm also from Arizona, been here my whole life, and I have no word for this. I haven't ever heard anyone say sunshower either. Different circles maybe.

Verizon coverage map links up with this data. Coincidence??

Meanwhile, me and my siblings: "It's raining sunshine!"

In the UK , well the part of the UK I live in we say "it's a monkey's birthday"

Well more actually most of the time we don't say anything about it all

Professor: And Josh what is your thesis about?

Josh: Urrmmmm ahh umm What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?

Professor: Josh youre studying statistics.

Josh: Yeah, naw Im going to graph it.

green, I dont live anywhere near that area tho, i just remember someone talking about it online when i was young and it stuck with me

Theodd1sout maybe?

I guess Hawaiian sunshine is just a thing my family uses...

Apparently I'm from an area that uses sunshower, but I've always heard it called the devil beating his wife

I’ve always called it liquid sunshine

That's what I say as well up here in the Pacific Northwest
That sounds like a euphemism for pee.

Where I'm from we say it is 'carnival in hell'

I'm going with "rainshine" but maybe thats just me

It happens very frequently in Florida, I know of it as a sunshower. It not unheard of for your FoV to be filled with blue sky but it's actively raining... that is when people mention sunshower. I've heard the devil is beating his wife but only rarely.

It's a sunshower (also, hoagie and pork roll).

Pennsylvanian spotted.

Anyway it's a grinder
- Ha, close! I'm originally from NJ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshower

I have a theory that this has a special name less frequently the further you get from the equator because it's a phenomenon that's less rare when the sun spends less time overhead
So it's from the French who took it from a poem about Greek gods. So the Christians stole from the pagans yet again lol.
Crazy that nearly every culture on earth has a name for it that's somehow related to animals getting married.

Wonder if they all stem from the same ancient folk tail or if it's just somehow convergence.

The devil what?!?

Heard it called fox-rain.

We always said it was the devil’s daughter was getting married.

I felt like I was taking crazy pills until I came across this comment. I've always heard this one instead of the "beating his wife" one.

I've also heard some variations of this one like "a witch is marrying the devil" or "a witch is getting married".

I personally call them sunshowers.