Rubbish weather

England is famous for its rubbish weather, but this summer has been unusually poor. As it happened that didn't affect us much and we had a great summer: we got a few days sun on the beach to start us off; managed to climb Snowdon and not get rained on by the summit cloud much; spend a week off in the sun in the Med; and it was grey in the Lakes but then it always is. But I draw the line at having to walk back from the local in the pouring rain; thats just not on. Now that school has restarted and we're not on hols the weather should be tantalisingly fine, but its worse than ever. I blame that Piers Corbyn myself. Or possibly its global warming. Or the Russians. Or the lingering after effects of the Chinese weather-modification for the olympics? Now there's a thought...

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Summer 1986, England, one effing day it didn't rain all day and the sun came out. Ms Rabett called frantic, let's go for a walk. We did. It rained.

I usually take exception to suggestions that British weather is crap: it's actually quite pleasant to my mind. (But then I'm not a sun-seeker.) But it really has been pretty grim of late. I live in Gloucestershire and though I haven't been flooded myself I did experience the joys of no fresh water for a while last year and it's now been raining for most of the past week.

Good weather to stay indoors and watch educational television?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings/programme.shtml?day=sunday&service…
"... a new ice age. Iain Stewart examines how the scientific community managed to get it so wrong,..."

Hat tip to Pete Best:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/09/how-much-will-sea…

[Oh dear.Well hopefully it isn't as crap as it sounds. TV-less, I won't be watching -W]

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 06 Sep 2008 #permalink

Yes, English weather can be nice and it usually corresponds in time to when the pound is high and the dollar low. We think of this as the good weather surcharge.

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." - John Ruskin.

Or as an old lady once said to me as I stood outside a youth hostel, in the rain, somewhere along the Pennine Way. "Tha'll not dissolve."

Anyhow, 2008 seems to have fallen to the "curse of the 8s". Interestingly, despite the lack of sun, and the large amount of rain, this summer has been pretty much an average one temperature-wise (June virtually on the nose, July slightly under and August slightly over IIRC).