Two sentences in and I already have a thousand questions.
Nobody (edit: here) would call it 'pleasant' right now
Fingers crossed for a 35c-40c heat wave in summer ... what with our uninsulated houses without AC !
Of course, we shouldn't ever complain about anything as there are children dying in Africa :) ! /s
Snowfall is fairly uncommon and the average is maybe 10-inches a year in Amsterdam. Summers are fairly moderate.
So, yes, I would say it had a mild climate compared to most places. If you're looking at Mediterranean climates, there are very few of those.
We also start having people saying things (and writing articles) about how the remember how much worse it was in 1965(?).
Warm summers just lead to more moaning that gives a different lot of countries a chance to laugh at us.
I suppose I should be grateful there are not many people who can go on about their memories of the summer of 1911.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land.
> "In the British case, even though the southernmost point of England lies some 300 miles north of the northernmost point of Japan, the Isles have significantly warmer winters, thanks to the Atlantic Ocean and its Gulf Stream, which carries warm equatorial water up the eastern seaboard of North America and thence eastward toward Ireland. This warmer water raises the temperature of westerly surface winds enough so that the Isles experience ample cold, winter rain but very little snow."
The article doesn't go into the basics of gyre formation in the ocean basins, which is driven by the Coriolis force and the global atmospheric circulation, but western intensification boundary currents (e.g. Gulf Stream) arise from that physical phenomena, and thus the Gulf Stream wouldn't be 'shut down' by large glacial meltwater releases, at most it would just be pushed south.
P.S. Land permafrost likely sequesters at least as much carbon as the deep ocean does during ice ages, and the whole 'oceanic conveyor belt' theory of how atmospheric CO2 drops during ice ages isn't as solid as some claim.
Huh, when I started the article, the Rocky Mountains being the cause might have been the last thing I guessed.
Strangely, though, the UK hasn't had too many hurricanes in its history, which is why I'm curious.
Edit: I may have answered my own question. Even with a higher likelihood of storms, I think the mountainous and hilly topography makes it hard for storms to really hit the UK, which might be why there have been few hurricanes in the past.
Quebec is a pretty big province (with almost the whole population in the south part anyway) but also a city. I guess an American can easily picture the location of Montreal 45.5°N (30 miles north of New York/Vermont) or Quebec City 46.8°N (70 miles east of north Maine). Both are quite south of London (51.5°N) or Paris (48.9°N). (For reference, most of the US-Canadian border runs along the 49°N parallel.)
The one time last year? it fell on winter snow was the only time I recall in last decade+, and on glaciers this layer is still clearly visible. Not many others imprinted there, just few from past decades.
We also have harsh dry continental weather in Europe, you just have to move a bit more east, Russia starts to have its meteorological say.
Ie my own Slovakia has generally much lower humidity compared to say Switzerland or France, summers and winters and everything in between. Younger back home I've skied in -30C, and also experienced above 30 regularly during summers.
This is coming from decade and a half spending here in the western Europe. Coming home say on Christmas is always quite a shock for my breathing aparatus, more humidity simplifies breathing and infections.
The US west coast is mild near the ocean, but quickly hits mountains and the Eastern side of those mountains has a much more extreme climate. Seattle has a climate not too different than London and much more mild than Boston.
Is that extreme enough by your standards?
Anyone know the answer?
But overall the point the article tries to make is that people like to say that Europe is unusually mild when really people just compare it to the wrong places (with the US East coast being a popular and uniquely bad comparison du to the reasons summarized by GP).
In other words: In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.
Definitely not "southeast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia" because it's in New Brunswick and a few miles west of Nova Scotia.
Doesn't seem "deep into the northern wilderness" either, it's five miles from the sea.
After I moved there, I don't understand the trope. It's extremely windy and humid.