Would you consider moving, if future summers are this cloudy?

[Sunny76]

1 hour ago, summer blizzard said:

My loyalty to my country runs deeper than the level of sunshine so no, i would not leave the UK for the weather.

My advise is to move to the South West or the Isles Of Sicily.

I would argue the weather can play a major role into whether someone decides to relocate.

However, I did spend some time in Toronto(18 months in total), and the seasons are much better. More warmth in summer, colder drier and frostier in winter. That all been said, I do prefer the English way of life, the pub culture, countryside and just the humor more to my liking.

I don't knock Canada though, as it felt like home for quite a while, but I never saw myself actually settling there. Europe on the other hand is a different story. Much closer to come back and see friends and family, with the added benefit of a continental climate that north america provides, and not a 7 hour flight.

[Summer8906]

The most pressing reasons why I believe the UK is not as good a place to live compared to say 15 years ago are not weather-related but..

If I could leave the UK between November and February, I would do. I find the drab southern England winters, frequently a mix of dull and drab, and wet and stormy, really quite trying and frankly depressing. If there was more snow, frost, sun and even mild and settled (think Jan 2012 or Feb 2019), I'd be much happier. Add to that our time zone which is out of sync with other countries on our longitude, such as Spain and France, giving us disproportionately dark afternoons, particularly before Christmas when solar noon is early. This is particularly true in early Nov when the sun rises around 7am but sets before 5pm, which seems an hour out of sync. Unless we get a dry settled winter (Jan/Feb 2019 being the most recent example), the dark months are a trial.

I do moan about cool cloudy summers but on the other hand I do not find them unbearable. It's the winter which is the real problem.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

6 hours ago, stainesbloke said:

Have to be a bit careful what I say, as when I suggested in the moans thread that heat-hating people move to an area of the country that has weather they prefer in summer (such as a coastal location or Scotland) I got jumped on by a number of people, with some very narky comments!

For me, moving to Central Europe has made such a huge difference to my general wellbeing and mental health. Although the weather isn’t drastically different to my home region of London/SE England, it’s all in the nuances. We get proper seasons here. Summers are sunny, warm, and thunderstorms plentiful and often severe (especially this summer). Autumn is often foggy and atmospheric. Winters are mixed with a bit of everything and snow is pretty much guaranteed on multiple occasions. Spring is variable, it can be cold (like this year) or warm (like last year).  What we don’t get much of here are the endless, grey skies of depressing nothingness that plague NW Europe so often and are just like Chinese water torture. I hope I never have to endure the UK climate for any length of time ever again.

Prague weather sounds very close to my ideal, I have to say!

Though perhaps (having spent some of last winter in Greece, getting out of the UK just before lockdown) perhaps my preference now is for what I experienced there: mild dry winters with short spells of intense cold and heavy snow. Kind of the best-of-both worlds. Also a surprisingly high number of winter thunderstorms, on cold fronts.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Summer8906

[stainesbloke]

3 hours ago, Summer8906 said:

Prague weather sounds very close to my ideal, I have to say!

Though perhaps (having spent some of last winter in Greece, getting out of the UK just before lockdown) perhaps my preference now is for what I experienced there: mild dry winters with short spells of intense cold and heavy snow. Kind of the best-of-both worlds. Also a surprisingly high number of winter thunderstorms, on cold fronts.

Greece in winter sounds pretty good In summer it’s lovely too but so hot, nice if you can get to the sea or a pool everyday but otherwise might be a bit much. 
Winter in S England is grim, something to be endured through gritted teeth. Occasionally there’s some interesting weather but 98% of time it’s just horrible.

[DogToffee]

Definitely tempted to move as far north as possible, I'm struggling more and more during the summer, although since the more extreme heat moved on, this year's not been so bad in recent weeks, almost pleasantly cool and even quite dim some days.

Whether moving north would entail Perth or Tromso though is the bigger question.

[conor123]

I moved to Madrid in 2016 and it really has an ideal climate in the early autumn, day after day of gorgeous sunshine and days between 20-30c with low humidity, pretty much every year I've been there has had a late October heatwave, especially in 2017 when it was exceeding 28c close to Halloween plus the extra day length of the sun setting 2 hours or so later in winter than here in Shropshire makes a big difference but November - February is still pretty grim, cold (often below freezing at night) foggy and often wet which can be dissapointing seeing the fohn effect frequently boosting Valencia/Alicante etc up to 25c on occasion whilst Madrid sits in 6c muck.

[AderynCoch]

As someone who likes having four seasons I'm pretty satisfied here. Summers in particular are excellent, regularly reaching the high 20s/low 30s but only occasionally topping 35C. It's nearly always warm enough to sit outside in shorts of an evening (the past week being a notable exception!). The only real bugbear is that winter is much more unreliable, compounded by the fact that milder months and seasons vastly outweigh the colder ones these days.

I've never had a problem with air quality here either. It's actually windier here than one might think, with it being flat in three directions. It might be more of an issue in some of the valleys of northern Slovakia (like Žilina, where I lived for a time), which are surrounded by pretty high mountains. Spectacular scenery though.