Ahah. Very punny. So today I go and check the weather forecast for Northampton and what do I see?

I see that it’s going to rain all day with high, blustery gales continuing throughout the night. And this is summer. So I’m addressing today something people probably want to know (and probably do know, but you foreigners don’t) which is ‘Why is it always raining in England?’

It’s been said that the first thing an Englishman will talk about to a stranger when they meet up is something about the weather in about 80% of encounters. Mainly because you meet strangers outside at the bus stop or waiting for some other form of transport, while it’s pouring with rain. We complain, but we never move. What’s with that?

Truth is that the mix of the warm tropical air from below and the cold polar air from the top sort of mixes together just below… ohh… Manchester. Anyone who’s done GCSE Geography should know that when cold air meets warm air, the eventual outcome is, well, rain. Lots of rain, if it’s continuous. Also, our proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the actions of the Gulf Stream give us highly changeable weather patterns, which would explain why it could be hailing one minute and sunshine the next.

The south coast is the sunniest in Summer, which technically starts in June, but nobody ever notices. Dorset, in particular, averages about 1,750 hours of sunshine, but also holds the record for the coldest ever temperature recorded in Britain, being something like -27 Celsius. It’s usually protected from the cold in Summer thanks to it being quite close to France and Spain, which not only stop bad stuff building up near it, but also blow warm air up to them. Aww.

It rains on average one in three days in the UK, with more occurring in East Anglia thanks to the low pressure in the North Sea, which basically blows all the bad stuff to places like Great Yarmouth constantly. All the land masses also act as a funnel just to make sure we get all the storm surges and stuff in that one place. That’s nice of them, isn’t it.

In a year there’s often about 7m of rain falling on a single place in the UK, but the annual rainfall rates in London are lower than in New York or Sydney. So come visit us, just don’t forget your anorak, or even your Alton Towers plastic poncho.

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Tags: June, place, Rita, Tran