Major League Soccer’s season runs from March until late November. That encompasses some really warm days in the North American summer, but it doesn’t take in too much cold and damp — approaching winter or escaping it.

And then there is the English Premier League. Which plays right through the winter, but starts in August.

Even in England, August should mean warm, dry days.

But then we saw today’s games — played in conditions Noah might appreciate. Or Scots would ignore.

Powerful, nonstop rain. Driving rain. Rain bullets.

And as I watched the handful of Premier League games today, it struck me that fans in Europe are a hardier set of people than those in Southern California. Where people used to call sports desks at newspapers and ask if an American football game would be rained out by a bit of drizzle.

The players were drenched almost instantly. Ridiculous haircuts, ruined. Industrial levels of gel, washed into the grass.

The statistic was something like “England got the equivalent of a week of winter rain in two hours”. Something like that. It poured. At times, it was so heavy it seemed a person couldn’t see more than a few feet through it.

But they kept on playing, in England (as they would throughout Europe) and the fans sat in the stands. Yes, they were mostly covered by a roof, but they were doomed to get soaked when they left. And probably were soggy from their arrival.

If it rained like that in SoCal, the game would have been seen by about 500 people in stadiums seating 25,000 and up.

Everyone knows Californians, in particular, will not sit outside in bad weather. Just not happening. And by “bad weather” we mean temperatures lower than, say, 65 Fahrenheit. Let alone rain.

But the English will. And I admire them for it. Rain of Biblical proportions, a temperature of 64, and there they are singing their songs and watching Chelsea.

They filled stadiums in West Bromwich, in the Midlands; and Liverpool and Watford, north of London.

Not sure I could get used to that, whatever it is they call the heavens opening in August. “English summer”, or something like that.