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Toronto is also over 5 million in its metro (over 6 million in fact) and it has considerably colder and snowier winters than London. If that's someone's criteria.
But Toronto has much nicer summers than London.
British people who move to Toronto and southern Ontario typically do not complain much about the weather, even if the winters are more harsh there than in the UK.
Toronto doesn't get warmer than London until the middle of May, and is cooler again by mid September. Your summer is 3c warmer, but your winter is 9c colder.
Is that from absolute totals; if they have the same sunshine patterns, Scandinivia will end up with higher totals
We had a thread on this. And the results were calculated then. And look, Helsinki has in a July some 50 hours of more sun. If we assume that it is sunny for 50% of the time, it's 25 hours. So obviously if Helsinki averages 291 hours of sun and London 212, Helsinki is obviously sunnier. Not to mention the sun arc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by B87
June and July are a bit sunnier in Helsinki, August is the same (that's using our apparently dodgy sun recorder). Interestingly the annual sun percentage at Vantaa is 36.1%, which is lower than London's 38%. South coast locations are around 45%.
Those percentages are "something in that fashion", rounded up/down to the nearest hour of daylight. If a year has 4383 hours of daylight, 1780 hours of bright sunshine is 40.6%.
As every place on earth has exactly the same hours of daylight during the year, it doesn't matter.
Toronto is also over 5 million in its metro (over 6 million in fact) and it has considerably colder and snowier winters than London. If that's someone's criteria.
But Toronto has much nicer summers than London.
British people who move to Toronto and southern Ontario typically do not complain much about the weather, even if the winters are more harsh there than in the UK.
That's probably becuse people who leave the UK, and are fussy at about weather, generally head to Australia or Spain. I have never known anyone to emigrate to Canada for the weather.
Even dhdh, who hated the London climate before he arrived, now admits it is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be, and the summers are actually alright.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rozenn
Dhdh's weather preferences have changed though. He used to find Paris' summers terrible when he lived there IIRC, and Paris is slightly warmer than London.
Shows that even a heat lover can acclimatise to poor summers. J/K
To be fair and add a little nuance:
Climates cannot be/should not be judged in a vacuum but in conjunction with the place itself & your lifestyle.
What sort of redeems London's climate for me is that it is quite well suited to its lifestyle as a large urban jungle/world city where I work in a formal office environment.
Wearing a suit, taking the crowded tube and the absence of A/C in homes all contribute to me appreciating a mild, rather than hot summer. There's also no sea or lake around, and 24°C is largely enough to chill and have a picnic in a city park or have a cocktail on a rooftop. The latter would also be very pleasant in the evening (10pm-12am) where it would be around 20-22°C in the city centre on a typical summer day. Nice's 21-28°C averages, as perfect as they are for late night beach parties/BBQ's/swimming/etc. would be ill-suited to London where you're surrounded by concrete most of the time.
Year-round, coolish/mild temps also combine very well with drinking (being drunk or even tipsy in 30°C weather is not something I have ever appreciated); considering London's excellent nightlife and drinking culture I'd say this is also a plus
Winter could be warmer, of course, I've never appreciated single-digit temps, but it is nevertheless stunningly mild for the latitude, gets very few truly cold days and even 10°C+ lows are not unheard of. I love snow, but beautiful powdery snow in a mountain forest, NOT dirty slushy snow that is the unfortunate motto of cold cities.
London's real, legit, undeniable flaw to me remains its severe winter darkness (short days + low sun angle + honestly very high cloudiness); the time zone doesn't help when it gets pitch black at 4.15pm.
The rest of the year is alright/meh in terms of sun, it's obviously no Med, but doesn't feel vastly different from the rest of Western Europe bar its southern fringes; the predominance of partly cloudy feels like (no scientific basis for this) it yields less completely sunless days than Paris/Brussels/etc.
What is entirely unjustified to me is the "rainy" reputation. I have seldom lived in a place where I've felt so rarely inconvenienced by the rain. First of all it doesn't seem to happen that often, second it's most of the time very light. People probably confuse cloudiness with rain, hence the "myth". Btw, the fact that Wikipedia once used Greenwich (1400 hrs or so) values probably didn't help.
TL;DR a climate that is portrayed as being rainy and cold, which is in fact a generalization of its admittedly very gloomy winters. The rest is OK, and the general lack of extremes is very appreciable in the context of a huge, busy, crowded world city.
The same climate in Nice would possibly drive me nuts though. Any rainy day in Nice, especially in winter, means everybody stays home, the whole place becomes a ghost town and nothing happens, so it tends to get depressing real quick, whereas London is always buzzing whether it's 1°C, dark and rainy or 25°C with glorious sunshine. Cf. my initial statement on "climates cannot be judged in a vacuum".
As shown in my above edited post, folks around here start talking "hot", for the most part, when talking about 90F or above. But of course high humidity and high 80'sF temps is very uncomfortable and would have a higher heat index. I was just referring to temp as a stand alone measurement. Many other things are in the mix in reality. Miami is hot and uncomfortable in summer cause they heat index never drops below a 100F during the day lol.
Again here is a NOAA heat index chart, and "hot" is again 90F and above. The US has pretty much very warm to hot summers for virtually the whole country. The reason is subjective and based on averages. UK folks have summers with avg high temps in the 70'sF. For them 85F being hot makes sense, but not for here.
80F and above to 89F is "very warm".
I think there's a difference though between what makes a hot day individually versus what makes a hot summer overall. A place with average highs in the mid to high 80s would (on average) experience numerous days in the 90s (albeit interspersed with cooler days). I would think that you'd get to September and look back on the previous couple of months and there would have been enough hot days to characterize the aggregate as hot.
Once the average high temperature drops below the mid 80s the preponderance of cooler days overshadows the intermittent hot days and the overall perception switches from hot to warm (or cool as the case may be).
Most places, especially north of the 40th latitude has a much higher cloud percemtage in winter. The more north you go however, the less the share of your total potential sunshine in the cloudy winter will be. Let's say a place at the equator and a place on the arctic circle have 80% cloudiness in winter and 20% cloudiness in summer. The arctic location will get much more sun hours because much more of their annual daylight hours will be in the sunnier part of the year, whereas at the equator, half the daylight hours will be in the cloudy part of the year bringing down their sun hlur count. The arctic location gets much more sun hours even though the two places are exactly as cloudy and have exactly the same amount tine spent with clear skies.
However, the weaker sun from the arctic circle will of course record a lower sun percentage with the same cloudiness compared to more southerly locations.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Infamous92
I'd say that threshold is a bit too low even for us, 90°F / 32°C is only a few degrees above average. July 2010 had an average high of 91°F / 33°C.
I think 95°F / 35°C would be more appropriate.
I was just stating where it came from. And New York's normal high in July is 85°F/29.4°C
That's probably becuse people who leave the UK, and are fussy at about weather, generally head to Australia or Spain. I have never known anyone to emigrate to Canada for the weather.
There is no doubt a lot of truth to that.
And on City-Data/Weather we tend to overestimate the importance of the weather to the average person. (At least in terms of choosing a place to live.)
And on City-Data/Weather we tend to overestimate the importance of the weather to the average person. (At least in terms of choosing a place to live.)
There is an old thread on here about that topic, and I was going to bump instead of starting a new one. But then I saw that the date was 2007...
Besides, on the topic of Toronto, it has a far superior climate to Moscow. In Moscow it's non uncommon for snow to be constantly lying on the ground from October to April, I imagine that's almost unheard of Toronto.
The Scandinavian capitals have even shorter days and lower sun in winter, but still are sunnier on a yearly scale.
So? The difference is tiny there are differences in the London area let alone between London and Scandinavian cities and traversely practically get 24 hours of sunshine in the Summer!! Do people claim that Scandinavian capitals are 'the lousiest weather of any major city?' Helsinki is a lot colder than London year round and the winters are bloody freezing (see my comment about snow etc) and what about the rain thing? London is one of the drier cities in Europe yet we are to believe London has the worst weather of any major city! pleeeeeeease, I have never heard such rubbish in my life.
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