You may be curious to understand what the waterproof and breathability ratings, commonly seen in snowboarding jacket advertising, actually mean. Well, here's a little primer.

Waterproofing - you'll often see tags or descriptions of jackets saying things like "15,000mm waterproofing". This is a gauge to measure just how much water a jacket's fabric can take before water begins to soak through. 15,000mm means you could pour that many millimeters of water on it before the fabric begins to give. That's just under 50 feet. So I suppose unless you plan on snowboarding through a monsoon, you'll be just fine. In fact, at 5,000mm (16 feet) should serve you just as well. There's a bit of an arms race with these numbers, but by all practical accounts, anything above 3-4 thousand mm will serve you just fine. Much more important is overall construction of the jacket, especially at the seems. There's no use having millions of mm of waterproofing fabric if the zippers act like leaky plumbing.

Breathability - This measure comes in grams. You'll often see something like this on jacket labels: "10,000g/24hrs/m2". This means in a laboratory, 10,000 grams of water vapor were found to pass through a square meter of fabric in a 24 hour period. 10,000g is considered to be very breathable and is well suited for very rigorous activity or activity in very moist conditions. The higher this number, the higher will be the price of the jacket, generally speaking. It's is generally good to get the highest rating your budget will allow, but no need to go overboard here. Much of how much this statistic matters will depend on how much you tend to sweat. If you are a high-perspiration athlete, your should go for the higher number. If not, don't sweat, as it were, over this as much.

Here at Snowboarding-Jackets.com, we offer technical gear that looks great at the best prices. Please look around at our jackets for men, women, boys and girls, and find that perfect combination of waterproofing and breathability that will make your trips outdoors the most enjoyable. Happy boarding!