June 16, 2005 at 11 AM
Mostly Cloudy With A Chance of Nothing Much
I forgot what it was like living in a place with only one season. The climate in this part of England is best described as Not Too Much. Not too much sun. Not too much rain. Not too much warmth. Not too much cold. (Coldth?) Last weekend, it was grey and chilly, to the point that I noticed it felt almost exactly like it had in February and March, and come to think of it, a lot like April and May too. The singular feature of the climate here actually seems to be that just about every day it offers a little bit of everything. It frequently rains, but not a lot, and not for long. It’s often grey, but the sun pokes its nose through the clouds at some point nearly every day. It’s somewhat windy, sometimes.
I got used to the heaving oppressiveness that is the Quebec climate. Montreal doesn’t have four seasons — there is no real transition from goddamn-it’s-cold to jeezus-it’s-hot — but the contrast from one month to the next, and even from one day to the next, can be downright shocking. It made me climate obsessed. I had to know how scandalously hot or cold it was at any moment, and what on earth was going to happen next. Long range forecasts, climatic averages, I wanted it all.
It’s a silly habit really. Weather just is, and perhaps nowhere more so than here. There’s nothing to be done, and it’s not going to affect my life that much. English weather isn’t predictable, because it does change all the time, but that’s precisely what makes forecasts worthless here. I can count on one hand the number of days where it was just sunny all day, and I don’t think there’s been a day yet this year where it rained non-stop. It’s hard to shake the habit of being meteorologically-inclined, but the East Midlands are doing their best to help me.
Now if only OS X Tiger hadn’t included a weather widget.
Previously: Chance
Subsequently: Use the Force
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