I ride to work year round in Portland, so that means riding in rain during the winter, during the spring, during the fall, and during 9/10ths of the summer. That's a slight exaggeration but only slight. Anyway, I wear
- Old Burley rain jacket (Showers Pass is the current equivalent). The key is the jacket must have a big back vent and huge armpit zippers. When fully open, the pit zip openings are some two feet long. That's a lot of airflow, and little to no rain comes in. Someday I will have a seamstress install a zippered vent in the forearms too, for even more airflow. With all zippered vents open, I find I can ride fairly hard, like at 7/10ths, and still not "boil in the bag".
- Light rain pants that you can pull over your trousers and shoes. Keep them rolled up in your bag, and if it starts to rain, it only takes a couple minutes to pull over and don the pants. Unfortunately, no rain pants come with zippered vents. They really should.
- Cap under the helmet. Because all those helmet vents let in plenty of rain.
- Neoprene booties that velcro over your shoes. Also carried in the bag and deployed as needed.
- Neoprene gloves, not really for rain but for cold.
- Fenders. Very important!
This works great for light rain, heavy rain, cold rain, warm rain. No matter how hard the rain, I get to work or home either completely dry or slightly damp, depending on how hard I've been riding.
It is never very hot + very humid + raining in Portland. I can't imagine what would work under those conditions short of a cycling cape. Which seems like a pretty cool alternative to my head-to-toe-rain-gear technique, if you ride upright at a moderate pace.