This is a post I wrote back in September. The screen capture is from then also. it wasn’t 20 C today. I have had a huge backlog of things I wrote that I never posted. Then I stopped writing a bit and have been slowly posting things. Then I just forgot to post stuff. I have come full circle and want to write again so the first thing I am doing is getting the backlog out. I felt that this post was appropriate since its like 60 degrees Fahrenheit in March right now.
I got the impression prior to my move to London that the city has a reputation for being cloudy and wet. After living here for a little while I realised that is a broadly accurate statement. The problem is it’s a wildly broad statement. What I’ve learned is that complaining about the weather almost national pastime in this city. I was all but told that by more than 2 friends of mine. From their point of view I can understand some of the complaints. Coming from New York however where there is a significantly wider variance of whether you prefer a little bit more of the consistency of England. Even if that means less sun generally.
Everyone is pretty consistent in their assessment that things “get real”when it’s below zero (Celsius). That is 32 F for Americans. They also comment about the fact that it usually doesn’t get over 25°C or about 77 F in the summer. I have also heard from many people that snow is virtually unheard of. Ironically all the statements I just made are not true this year. We had a week of snow that basically shut down London even though from my perspective coming from NY it wasn’t much snow. It was 25-32 C for probably around a month to 6 weeks in the summer. And because of the heat there was tons of sun.
The rational side of me wants to believe everyone who made the original wild generalisations of the weather here and wonder why this year is different. The other less rational side of me is thinking why am I in the middle of a big deception around the weather in this country?.
Even with the two snowstorms. Well what they consider snowstorms. Even with the few days below zero. And even with 4-6 weeks of heatwave in late June and July I been very comforatable with the weather. The idea of a milder summer and a milder winter compared to what I am used to appeals to me. Problems start to arise when it gets over 25°C, somewhere in the 80s Fahrenheit. That is when air-conditioning would be required in New York. There simply is no air conditioning most places here. To survive we bought two fans. On most days we were ok. Thankfully when I am writing this post in early September the weather has settled down to 20-25 C or mid 60’s to mid 70’s F. That is kind of perfect. The rain has come back too but not as bad as in the winter. Lets face it our lawn needed the water since it was getting pretty brown for a while.
