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It was raining for three days. the farmers were very happy to water their fields.

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It has been raining for three days. the farmers were very happy to water their fields.

I normally would choose has been raining, but the time of the second sentence refers that maybe the event ended and it is not raining anymore, so what do you think?

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  • It would help us a lot if you could use the available formatting options to clearly distinguish between your question and the sentence(s) about which you are asking. As things stand it's too difficult to separate them.
    – High Performance Mark
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 13:38
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    It’s unclear what timeframes you intend to establish. It’s also unclear why the farmers would need to water their fields if it had just rained for three days. Maybe you mean they were happy they didn’t have to water their fields. Or maybe they were happy that their fields had received the water they needed.
    – Jim
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 14:56
  • "We had a lot of wet weather last week. It rained/was raining for three days" OR "It has been raining for three days" (and still is raining). I agree with Jim that the second half doesn't make sense. (If it's a new sentence, 'the' should have a capital letter.)
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 17:34

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Tenses are not thrown together randomly. They are used to represent the meaning that you want.

It rained for three days. The farmers were very happy to water their fields.

It has been raining for three days. The farmers are very happy to water their fields.

The key is to match tenses*.

*In the second case, you are using the present perfect and the simple present.

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It {some form of rain} for three days. the farmers were very happy to water their fields.

Your sentence sounds like it's trying to say the rain watered/is watering the fields, then suddenly says the farmers are watering their fields.

When it rains, the rain is doing the watering, not the farmers. The farmers would be happy that their fields are watered by the rain.

It was raining for three days; the farmers were very happy to have their field watered.

This is fine.

It had been raining for three days; the farmers were very happy to have their field watered ... when ???

This sentence sounds like it has something missing. The farmers were very happy to have their field watered sounds like an "aside" more than the complete idea because watered implies whatever is providing water is "done" with that.

However "It had been raining for three days" sounds like it's still raining - either now, or within the timeline of events in the past you're talking about.

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  • really thank you. i get it now . sorry the question seemed odd.
    – Sara
    Commented Jun 13, 2020 at 19:42

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