British Expats - Is it really that bad?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lothianlad (Post 10283450)

No, not really.....the UK does not have a climate - it simply has weather, and when compared with most other countries in the world the weather here in the UK is only very rarely a threat to life and limb. Compared with many other countries it is extremely innocuous in that respect - a bloody nuisance and extremely irritating and annoying it very often is - but hardly ever dangerous.

The UK may well have more tornadoes than any other country in the world - yes, honestly, it does, but 99.9% of them pass unnoticed - a mere whirling up of a pile of dead leaves in the coppice but that's all. Even our much derided rain is often little more than a light fall of drizzly type stuff. We no longer have the horrible smogs of the past - the air is generally Febreze clean and fresh, our summer heatwaves are cool and our bitter winter spells are mild on a global scale.....paralysing blizzards and ice storms hardly ever occur even in the mountains, and an official drought in the UK is a spell of just fifteen consecutive days without measurable rainfall and in most parts of the UK that does not happen all that often either, even in the SE of England and East Anglia.

All in all out weather is tame even when compared with countries over on the nearby Continent.

The hurricane of October 1987 which affected SE England and East Anglia was extremely exceptional, and even though it resulted in about 35 deaths across the region it could never be compared with an American type hurricane, and those deaths in England was due to the fact that the storm was unexpected and under forecast, and no precautions were taken to prevent fatalities, plus that fact that we so rarely experience really severe weather conditions of any kind!

I remember one of my A Level Geography lessons where this very subject came up. The teacher insisted the UK had a Temperate climate (this is by chance when the heating wasn't working so we were wearing gloves and scarves in the classroom while a gale was whipping up outside!) so you can imagine as a 17 year old freezing his nuts off, I had some skepticism on her remark. However now that I am a little older, a little wiser and I am reasonable well travelled not to mention I have been an Expat so a few years - she was right. We do have a temperate climate in the UK that rarely threatens life.

I also remember a year or two in to living in Florida, the Daily Mail's headline was "Heatwave in the UK" or something - two days of 86F, riverbeds were drying up, old people were in hospital etc. Made me laugh, in mid August it is 86F at 1 in the morning here!