It rains a lot where I am. So I ride in the rain quite often. In hard rain it is difficult to see with my prescription glasses.

Anybody have some good tricks for keeping glasses usable in the rain?

Mike

Periodically wipe the lenses with your finger to get an even film of water, not droplets. (In cooler weather, consider wearing gloves that wipe well or that pull off easily so you can use your finger. Visors can help a lot in some rains for a while. In the daytime, Polaroid sunglasses often work well.

I've been battling this challenge for 55 year. Some rides are simply losers and I have to slow to safer speeds but I usually get the finger wipes close to right. Some rains require repeats often. I've thought about wipers many times but haven't put the inventor's cap on yet.

This stuff works. The water beads and runs off the glass.

Rain-X Glass Water Repellant

79pmooney, thanks. You are right - some rides just are too much. I am particularly concerned because I ride in brown bear country and want to be able to see up the road a bit. I will have cataract surgery soon which will hopefully do away with the prescription glasses, but I still will need to wear protective glasses and deal with rain.

Terry, I will give RainX a try. I know it worked well on the pilot house windows of my commercial power troller but it never occurred to me to put it on my glasses. I think you are on to something.

Mike

I often just take my glasses off in the rain, but I guess that doesn't work too well if you need the corrective lenses.

I have a small thick pad of paper towel in my vest pocket that I pull out and run over the front of my glasses. It gets soaked fast, but it still improves visibility even soaked better than a finger most times. My gloves just don't do the trick. There is something that I use in my ski goggles for fogging up called 'Cat Crap'; but it doesn't help much with rain.

Don’t paper towels scratch the lenses? I use nothing but lense clothes on mine.

RainX is not recommended for use on plastic so repeated use may damage the lenses. Check your local optical shop for recommendations.

Yes, paper products make glasses old fast. (You can dab off clean water with a paper towel but don't try to get the lens dry or wipe at all.)

The drawback to RainX is that if you do wipe it, it smears and makes your glasses opaque until you clean then with soap/detergent. At least that was my experience years ago. No something I ever want to repeat. That was mid-ride and the rest was one of the most blind rides I've ever done.

actual wipers exist that slide on over your finger or riding glove, but this is more of a mud-riding thing. In regular rain the smooth finger wipe, with or without an absorbent glove seems to work best for me as mentioned above.

Finger Visor Wiper on Amazon

I use to keep a large cotton handkerchief or bandana in my back pocket for blowing my nose and for cleaning my glasses. That was before I became a champion snot rocket blower. <grin>

I also agree that paper towels are among the worst things to clean lenses with. Cleaning lenses with paper towels, my safety glasses and sunglasses won't last two weeks before they are all scratched up. With cotton rags, they easily last a year maybe two before a arm or something falls off the glasses. Even the very cheapo glasses I wear for cycling.

Maybe narrower glasses with smaller lenses so they are less of a target for rain drops?

If you got the order wrong, blow nose then clean glasses could be a real mess.

Wear a brimmed cap under your helmet. It will act as an awning.

Just don't put it on the inside of the lens. It tends to evaporate and irritate your eyes.

Rain on the glasses no problem... Its the mud that gets me...

Contacts?

Pratt, contacts worked as a younger man, but not so much as I graduated (or devolved) to bifocals and then trifocals. I am scheduled to get single vision lens as part of cataract surgery in a month. I will need to use reading glasses, but I am fine with that, But I will still need glasses for riding, probably some sunglass variant. And those glasses will still have rain issues. I am a roadie, by the way.

I haven't picked up RainX yet, but will give it a try soon and will be mindful of the kind input herein.

Mike

All my prescription glasses are glass, not plastic. Yes, everything scratches plastic lenses.

I didn't know that could be a problem, thanks. I've used it on outside and inside of lenses, for foggy and wet rides in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Just spay a little solution on a cloth, then rub the lens with the cloth.

A couple of taps of the glasses on my thigh, and the water beads up and falls off the lenses.

+1 on the brimmed cap. Really helps me with the rain on glasses issue, too.

Contacts. I will never wear them for a reason that might be unique. In junior and high school I played ice hockey goalie. Wore glasses then so I had the funky cage. Funky but well padded. Very hard hits between the eyes didn't hurt at all. (My armor had a lot of *****s where successfully blocked shots hurt for days. But those cages worked. In fact, so well that now all the pros use them.)

But - if I blinked when that shot hit, I would have no idea where the rebound went. I might be 3 feet from where I needed to be to block the next shot. So ... I taught myself not to blink and it worked. I could watch the puck come in, hit the mask and be moving instantly to stop the next. Drawback? I still don't have a reliable blink reflex; certainly not one I would trust my vision to. Glasses have bailed me out many times.

+1 for Cap with brim.
Be careful with RainX if your glasses have any coatings on it.

Yes, and also keep the helmet low on your forehead so it is almost touching the glasses. That way, the upper portion of the glasses will be much more sheltered from the rain. This works whether you wear prescription glasses or just sunglasses. It greatly improves the ability to see.

I will give the brim capped/ low helmet style tomorrow. Plenty of rain in the Tongass Forest temperate rainforest.

Mike

I have often wanted t try Rain-X, but deferred since glasses are costly to deliberately experiment with. I wear progressives and had a set of non-progressive prescription sunglasses. They were great for riding and fishing, but I could not read my computer, wristwatch, phone, and definitely could not tie a fishing line with them. I used to use a visor under the helmet, but my new sized (vs universal sized) helmet has enough overhang that if keeps the pop-up shower in check. If it is heavier than a brief shower, I do not ride.

There used to be a liquid called Formula 303 that we used on kayaks and boat hulls that was a UV protectant, and it shed water and made the paddling easier. But I was not risk it on expensive non-glass-lensed glasses.

There’s a Rain-X for Plastic but I still wouldn’t use it on expensive glasses.