So far this winter we have had our fair share of cold snaps, leaving many people feeling the cold and Gloucester boiler installation company http://www.hprservicesltd.com/gloucester-boiler-installation-and-heating-systems/ have been very busy keeping people warm in their homes.  In fact, the United Kingdom is renowned for being a country of rapidly changing and very unpredictable weather – but what is the reason for this?

The United Kingdom has what is known as a Maritime climate which creates these unpredictable weather patterns. The country does have some regional variations, with the North tending to be colder and the south tending to be warmer. It also varies in rainfall, with the west seeing more rainfall than the east of the country. The reason for this variation even over a relatively small country, the United Kingdom, is there are different air masses that meet over the British Isles. The north of the country is the most exposed to the artic winds, bringing the cold air from the north, whereas the south receives tropical winds coming from the Azores, which bring very warm air with them. The west is the wettest region because it receives the maritime winds from the Atlantic which bring in rain and the east receives air from Europe which can be cold in the winter.

Of course, although this is the general rule, Britain can also experience more severe and extreme weather events, such as the great storm of 1987 (famously, even weatherman Michael Fish didn’t see this one coming!) – a hurricane force wind which caused a great deal of damage on the south coast of the country. This is unusual in this part of the country, with most of the extreme wind usually over the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland. Scotland does tend to have more extreme weather in general, due to being in the north, it is much colder even in the Summer months – snow lovers will love the CainGorm mountain, where there is snow on average of 100 days a year on the peaks! The rest of the UK only has an average of 10 days of snow per year!

So, the reason for the climate being so varied and difficult to predict, is that there are many different air currents fighting it out right above Britain, and it is not always easy to tell which one is going to win – and how long for!