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Why does London have such a bad reputation for weather although it’s actually pretty good?
What is your top stereotypes about UK/England/London? Probably something along the lines of bad food, bad weather, lots of tea etc. Well, when I first came to the UK, I was definitely expecting bad food and bad weather. But after almost five years here, although I can’t really say too much about the food, I really have to say that the weather is much better than I thought.
It’s the end of July. In Marylebone, London, it’s about 14-24C everyday, and it seldom rains (I understand if you don’t believe it, so screenshot proof attached) - where is more comfortable than this? Yes, maybe San Francisco is about the same, but guys, think about the reputation on weather of these two cities - isn’t it grossly unfair?
Graph 1: Weather Forecast for London on Jul 20th, 2020
Source: Google Weather
Hypotheses
So why does London have such a bad reputation for weather? Here are some hypotheses:
London’s weather is bad compared to other famous European cities, so it’s more of a _competitive disadvantage _(if I may mince words)
London’s weather was bad at some point in history, and the reputation spread from that time, probably by literature
This is a bit of a combination of 1) and 2) - London’s weather is/was worse than the British Empire’s colonies, and words spread from all those other countries around the world
London’s weather is actually not that bad, but because it’s the most famous city in England/the UK (where some places indeed have pretty rough weather), it gets its unfair share of bad reputation
English weather is not that bad, but English people just want to complain about it
So then of course I did some data analysis to prove/disapprove the hypotheses.
Analyses
1. Rainfall: London vs other UK place
First let’s look at within the UK.
Graph 2: Annual Average Rainfall Amount 1981-2010
Source: Met Office
OK, London area is one of the driest areas in the UK. In fact, London’s annual precipitation is just above 600mm - sounds much better than the >3,000mm areas in Scotland.
So at least it’s possible that London got its unfair share of bad weather reputation is true.
2. Rainfall: London vs other European cities
This time I’m focusing on historically important cities in Europe around 1800s, taken from this Wiki page. Well, it seems **London has below average annual rainfall among big European cities. **In fact, Milan, Istanbul, Rome, Lisbon, Paris and even Cordoba all have more rainfall than London.
Yes, I know, rainfall in mm alone doesn’t say much. So let’s look at number of rainy days in these cities. This time we’re onto something. London is 6/21 in terms of precipitation days, although it’s still behind Lisbon and Paris. Italy and Spain (of course) have the least rainy days.
Graph 3: Annual Rainfall and Number of Annual Rainy Days by City
Data Source: Wikipedia city pages climate sections; collated here
Then I also expanded this list to include other global cities such as New York, Shanghai, Tel Aviv etc, and London is still pretty much at the middle of the pack.
Graph 4: Annual Rainfall and Number of Annual Rainy Days by City (Extended)
Data Source:_Wikipedia city pages climate sections
So I guess it isn’t really true that London is much worse than other European cities in terms of rainfall or number of rainy days.
3. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine
On the Wiki page of Climate of London, in the intro section:
While the city annually has modest precipitation, annually averaging less than cities like Rome, New York City, or Shanghai, unlike those cities, London has many long periods (weeks sometimes) of overcast skies and frequent light mist-type precipitation, which may account for the rainy image of the city.
However there is no source listed on this.
So it brought me to my most important piece of investigation (as it later transpired) - what about sunshine? Is it so that it’s just always gloomy in London, although it doesn’t actually rain much?
So I did the same analysis, but using yearly hours of sunshine as a metric. And bingo - among the 360 cities globally investigated, London is ranked 331 (bottom 8th percentile) in terms of sunshine hours. Notable cities even cloudier than London are Copenhagen, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Warsaw, Zurich, Brussels, Dublin, Edinburgh, Bergen etc.
Graph 5: Annual Hours of Sunshine, Colored by Decile
Data Source: Wiki page
So yes, based on this data, there’s some truth to the stereotype.
4. What about sunshine hours across the UK?
Important question left: but is London really bad by UK standard as well? We saw earlier that London is among the driest places in the UK, but what about sunshine duration?
For that, I used the Met Office Station Historical Data and selected a few stations with sunshine data across the UK.
And it seems London is pretty much in the low-middle (not much variance overall). Remember that London is among the driest, however,** it is more cloudy than rainy**, by UK standard.
Graph 6: Annual Hours of Sunshine, Avg 2015-2019
Data Source: Met Office
I also had a quick look at the time series (the data goes back quite a bit), but it seems to be pretty consistent and I can’t find any major changes.
Conclusion
Yes, there is some truth to the stereotype. Although I feel London’s weather is pretty fine (not too hot, not too cold, always mild, and I never need an umbrella - it’s either drizzle or you can wait it out), it seems its bad reputation mainly stems from its gloominess/cloudiness.
That being said, I still feel something not captured in this is what type of cloudiness it is. There is a major difference between a straight two weeks of absolutely no sunshine + straight two weeks of sunshine, vs half of a day of sunshine everyday. And I feel London is more of the latter. It’s not guaranteed, but sunny spells are quite common.
Okay, but what about Hypothesis 5? I don’t know - ask your British friends. My hypothesis is that the hypothesis is true, of course.
Bonus
With the data I have, it’s very tempting to do scatters (in the vein of the good old 2x2). Where do you want to live? Lots of sun and lots of rain? Lots of sun and no rain? Or maybe lots of rain and no sun? Or maybe rather you don’t care - then I have no idea why you’ve read till this point.
Graph 7: Annual Hours of Sunshine vs Rainfall (mm)
Data Source: Wikipedia city pages climate sections
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