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If heavy continuous rain isn't common in London, it implies the lighter, more frequent rain is common. Seattle only gets 300 mm more rain, which isn't a lot, yet is quite a bit sunnier ( dries things out quicker ) and with less days of all precipitation than London. It stands to reason that it wouldn't feel a lot (if any) wetter than London or Paris.
Those days of rain on tutiempo include days with condensation on the recording equipment. The actual number of trace rain days is the number of days with an amount in the precipitation column.
London has 145 days per year with trace precip, and 100 with 1mm or more, fewer than Paris or Seattle.
It might be a bit of a stretch to say London gets all it's summer rain in thunderstorms. It had 37 days days of rainfall last summer, but only 5 thunder days for the year. It's low winter totals support my argument, lots of wet days and low rain/sun totals=drizzle, light rain. Better to get the rain over and done with imho, it's a lot more interesting, and you are ultimately drier for longer.
Plenty of your (ex )citizens over here. Light rain and drizzle that can last a good while seem to be the usual answer to my climate queries about the UK.
5 thunder days? That's well below the average though. In fact it's the lowest ever recorded there if it's correct (which I doubt in fact). An average year sees 15 thunder days. There's been an unusual lack of thunder days in recent years.
It might be a bit of a stretch to say London gets all it's summer rain in thunderstorms. It had 37 days days of rainfall last summer, but only 5 thunder days for the year. It's low winter totals support my argument, lots of wet days and low rain/sun totals=drizzle, light rain. Better to get the rain over and done with imho, it's a lot more interesting, and you are ultimately drier for longer.
Plenty of your (ex )citizens over here. Light rain and drizzle that can last a good while seem to be the usual answer to my climate queries about the UK.
First of all, you're right, most of our rain does not come from storms, but, here in Leeds I can assure you long spells of drizzle in summer are not common at all. Most of our summer rainfall comes from showers, not heavy, no, usually only giving about 5mm at best, but long spells of rain, heavy or drizzle, is not common at all.. how do I know? Well, I live here, and you don't, haha! Sun is low though, yes, but that doesn't equate to a lot of drizzle.. it just means a lot of moisture, areas to the west of Leeds are much wetter but the Pennine mountain range blocks most of the rain.
And people in England think England is super wet, when in fact it is not, so the general public are not well qualified to give an opinion.
My original idea was to compare latitudinal spreads north of California on the Western areas of North America to their European counterpart (about 42°N to 70°N) and it just so happens that the southern boundary of France with Spain/Med fit nicely approximately with the southern boundary of Oregon latitude wise and the northern coast of Norway fits nicely with the Arctic coast of Alaska latitudinal wise.. that was my original point I guess if that makes any sense.
Btw, I never included Finland in my original definition... but you are welcome to.
So I see that my "PNW" map was accurate. Of course the same can't be said for my Western Europe map, but as you implied, it's no big deal. Including all of Alaska, Yukon, and BC does make it a fair comparison and one can see it's about even in terms of the latitudinal span and the (very) general gradation of climate. Of course no matter what you do the PNW is far more topographically diverse and contains more interior climates, but the longitudinal span is about the same if not more in Western Europe so that presents another choice spectrum, of coastal vs. interior. It should also be noted that there are a few interiors in Western Europe, which have somewhat bigger seasonality and more day-to-day variability, for example Northern Sweden.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Weatherfan2
Anyway despite whatever people say about whether Seattle or London gets the heaviest rain, London easily beats Seattle for thunderstorms, so clearly it must get heavier rain as a percentage of the annual total overall. All its summer rain comes in thunderstorms and in winter its rain totals are pretty low anyway.
Seattle just has 7 thunder days, and even in unusually tame years London has 5 summer days, 15 on average if Weatherfan2's post is accurate. In any case London has on average more thunder than Seattle, but the rain doesn't come from thunderstorms like in the tropics or in Australia. If I'm not mistaken, the thunderstorms in both Seattle and London overwhelmingly come from the frontal-type thunderstorms and not straight-up convection, so this discussion has less weight than it may appear.
I think London actually averages about 16 tstorm days per year, with Paris about 18 and Rome 21. The Alps area gets more. The PNW coast gets less, but inland gets the same or more. Interesting to me is how much tstorm action places in AZ and New Mexico get. People have claimed that the desert SW is boring, but gets much more tstorms than Europe. All in all though, Europe seems to get much less tstorm activity than most areas of the US or Australia:
Those days of rain on tutiempo include days with condensation on the recording equipment. The actual number of trace rain days is the number of days with an amount in the precipitation column.
London has 145 days per year with trace precip, and 100 with 1mm or more, fewer than Paris or Seattle.
The Met service site, has Greenwich at 106 days for 583 mm-so 5.5 mm per rain day. Paris is 116 for 645 mm -5.6 mm per rain day. Seattle has 124 for 945 mm-7.6 mm per rain day.
My point was not that London is very wet, rather that I can't see Seattle feeling a much wetter place than Paris or London. It has more rain days and rainfall, but is significantly sunnier in winter, which I think would offset that
Quote:
Originally Posted by Weatherfan2
5 thunder days? That's well below the average though. In fact it's the lowest ever recorded there if it's correct (which I doubt in fact). An average year sees 15 thunder days. There's been an unusual lack of thunder days in recent years.
That was the lowest total listed, the highest was 23.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dunno what to put here
First of all, you're right, most of our rain does not come from storms, but, here in Leeds I can assure you long spells of drizzle in summer are not common at all. Most of our summer rainfall comes from showers, not heavy, no, usually only giving about 5mm at best, but long spells of rain, heavy or drizzle, is not common at all.. how do I know? Well, I live here, and you don't, haha! Sun is low though, yes, but that doesn't equate to a lot of drizzle.. it just means a lot of moisture, areas to the west of Leeds are much wetter but the Pennine mountain range blocks most of the rain.
And people in England think England is super wet, when in fact it is not, so the general public are not well qualified to give an opinion.
People don't typically say the UK is super wet, more just that rain is generally light and prolonged in comparison to here. Not a lot of short heavy rainfalls, with a clearance and warm sun, followed by more rain a couple of hours later. I don't see how low sun hours would equate to a lot of moisture. Winter skies in the UK seem to be more about low stratus cloud, rather than fast moving warm fronts, that do contain a lot of moisture-hence heavy rain.
Because we're an island, surrounded by the balmy Atlantic, and we're very humid, hence a lot of moisture, and a lot of cloud as a result. And, like I said, since Leeds is in eastern England, the hills block most of the rain, but not the cloud.. yeah, the rain here is not as heavy and short lived as in New Zealand, but heavy, prolonged rain is not common and hours, or days, of constant drizzle definitely isn't. There was a period in October last year that had constant light rain that resulted in eventual flooding and very soggy ground and a lot of fog.. that was not common, and everyone was shocked by how dull and wet it was.. and I think the current potential drought situation in eastern England reflects this, and how dry England really is
Because we're an island, surrounded by the balmy Atlantic, and we're very humid, hence a lot of moisture, and a lot of cloud as a result. And, like I said, since Leeds is in eastern England, the hills block most of the rain, but not the cloud.. yeah, the rain here is not as heavy and short lived as in New Zealand, but heavy, prolonged rain is not common and hours, or days, of constant drizzle definitely isn't. There was a period in October last year that had constant light rain that resulted in eventual flooding and very soggy ground and a lot of fog.. that was not common, and everyone was shocked by how dull and wet it was.. and I think the current potential drought situation in eastern England reflects this, and how dry England really is
Yes a lot of cloud, but not a lot of moisture, that's way your rain is typically lighter. The UK is less humid than NZ during winter. The Atlantic is relatively warm, but not warm enough to enable much convectional cloud during winter, mostly stratus cloud.
Liverpool on the west coast doesn't seem all that rainy (by total not duration) for being on the "rainy side"
Liverpool is quite dry, you're right, most of the rain falls on the hills, in places such as Buxton and Malham, which are much cloudier and wetter then elsewhere..
I think it's a worn stereotype though that the UK gets a lot of drizzle.. the UK is just very cloudy, but I have lived here all my life, drizzle, at least, prolonged spells of drizzle, is not common..
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