The east-west dry/wet thing is particularly noticeable in Scotland. Once you get over the 'pass' between Glasgow and Edinburgh there's an immediate difference on the eastern side, but you've only travelled about 15 miles.

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Fangirl Three wrote:The east-west dry/wet thing is particularly noticeable in Scotland. Once you get over the 'pass' between Glasgow and Edinburgh there's an immediate difference on the eastern side, but you've only travelled about 15 miles.

Oh yes, its unbelievable. Like night and day. Like youve observed, I too have found it that sharp - you're driving along and suddenly the weather is normal, the tarmac is dry, and the buildings are clean and clear of that mossy tinge.

During my early in the year sojourn on the Fife coast, the weather was pretty much as i expect to find it anywhere else in eastern britain that early in the year - a mix, and although they were having a wetter year than average like the rest of Britain, it was still more dry than wet, not one flake of snow or even a frosty morning, often mild enough to have pub lunches outdoors with a light jacket. Normal white clouds not heavy dark thick-to-bursting rain clouds.

In the south it graduates more slowly I find. Theres not a point on the M4 as you drive from the west. More like 'probably safe by Swindon but will be by Reading' so the graduation must be around there, or maybe beginning just after Bristol.

Quoting Buttrfield, without quote. My reply...

Well, further east too. The map of hottest summers around the UK shows a mix of 1995, 2003, 2006, 2018, and 2022 for everywhere east whether England or Scotland. And either 1899 or 1976 or some year of the 1940's remaining unsurpassed for the Highlands, Wales, Northern Ireland, and some other parts of western england. Good weather is an eastern phenomenon.

I dont think mid 20's are 'surprisingly hot' for them - whats unusual for them in the west is to have an extended dry spell where the sun can do its work. Our pig ignorant weather forecast may make it seem so because they're the Arctic and we're the Caribbean - that's Britains narrative and we're sticking to it, even though neither is true - no wonder they're so sick and tired of us and our cheerful ignorance at every turn. While not as often as the south east of England, its not unusual in a good summer to see 30, 31 or even higher marked across Edinburgh, Fife, the Borders, 28, 29 around Aberdeen, and 27 towards the west - let's say every other year. For south east England every year - but still only on handful of days. For the Midlands, Yorkshire and central east Scotland, every other year.

I dont know where we got the impression, or the nerve frankly, to push it about that their weather is noticeably more dreadful across the whole of Scotland. Its as if weve taken a Highland mountain range and used the rainfall, snowfall, and temperatures found there to extrapolate across the whole country. Its not as if we are south of France in comparison, mores the pity.

I had boyfriend from Dundee and i remember people saying to him when it snowed in 2009 or 2010 'at least you're used to it'. He kept saying 'no I'm not, we don't get any snow there most years'. Still it came - 'you know how to deal with this, the roads will all be cleared where youre from'. No, they arent used to it, the roads were apparently impassable, the gritters didnt exist because its so rare, the schools all shut, operations cancelled, and it basically resembled every part of the south every time it snows.

'Pack your thermals' people would joke as i went up there with him for a weekend in May/June. The mobile would ring as we enjoyed a late spring evening in a beer garden, sunny and still 20+ at 9pm, and 'hope you packed your thermals?' would again leave the mouth of someone having the same weather in the south east, or being rained on and lying on their sofa under a blanket in the south west.

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=419ad3eaf305d86b&q=Hottest+summer+uk+map&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0Aa4sjWe7Rqy32pFwRj0UkWd8nbOJfsBGGB5IQQO6L3JzWreY9LW7LdGrLDAFqYDH2woUsp5q8yOe1Ezp2_yrNm-KhyY6WR7ql-WY9pMeBdjQdgQyaTCmA92vt2Dr_JrUIiwBWxi8dGeiHeLnML2wgGe9GR_mWbEztLmbiCtPeqwQMROUEdc1PS33rHyU97oIjRlGRyLLetz2ZHwIpQ3cYcBD8Y3g&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjP-JGWkKSIAxUOS0EAHYfeMJIQtKgLegQIChAB&biw=1280&bih=800&dpr=1.5#vhid=rDivnYI8mPgYYM&vssid=mosaic

Dundee is the sunniest place in Scotland. They're much worse drivers there than in Glasgow, though. Perhaps because they're used to good conditions.

Fangirl Three wrote:Dundee is the sunniest place in Scotland. They're much worse drivers there than in Glasgow, though. Perhaps because they're used to good conditions.

Yes, I've noticed the yellow box is optional there - they just block the junction and to hell with anyone trying to get out.

I think its curious that we have all these belittling shibboleths in our deep culture that are designed to make all the neighbours seem pitiful - to distract us from our own hideously shabby reality maybe. The Scots all suffer under Arctic weather conditions, the Welsh are sexually attracted to sheep, the French all smell and are cowards, while across the sea the leprechauns suffer through the 'Irish curse' (small d*cks - I've never found this to be true), and so on. Least said about stereotypes of Gsrmans the better, but they're extensive - and the saddest part of that one is how genuinely hurt individual Germans are when they realise whats said about them. They look crestfallen and in need of a hug, like kids asking 'why would anyone be so cruel to me?' - its quite shameful really. I'm more and more embarrassed by it.

All starring ourselves as default perfection where everything is just as it should be, despite everything actually being very off kilter, with real rot as an undercurrent and sometimes bursting open. Undereducated, proudly so, with abusive state structures, and no more or less likely to suffer the faults we pin on others as they are. Is it projection? Only partly, I think its much deeper and more complicated. In this way, we seem to be quite similar to Russians. You get back to Heathrow, Gatwick etc, and its just an overwhelming sense of 'back to where nothing works, and its all caked in filth, and its all just a bit sh*t and its meant to be' - it must be how Russians feel when they land at Sheremetyevo.

Just to stick up for ourselves for a moment, the graffiti is far worse on the continent for one thing. I remember driving down the autobahns in Switzerland (or whatever they're called there), beautiful scenery, but there was graffiti all over absolutely everything - all the bridges and fences lining the motorways - and not "good" graffiti like in New York either, just layer after layer of dense and meaningless paint sprayed everywhere. In my neck o' the woods we tend to just have the occasional naff squiggle on a bridge.

Butterfield wrote:Just to stick up for ourselves for a moment, the graffiti is far worse on the continent for one thing. I remember driving down the autobahns in Switzerland (or whatever they're called there), beautiful scenery, but there was graffiti all over absolutely everything - all the bridges and fences lining the motorways - and not "good" graffiti like in New York either, just layer after layer of dense and meaningless paint sprayed everywhere. In my neck o' the woods we tend to just have the occasional naff squiggle on a bridge.

Yeah, no commitment. Sounds about right. 'Naff squiggles' should be our motto.

Their roads might be lined with more of that, but its colourful and there's far less litter (even to the extent of there being none) and the roads themselves don't destroy your vehicle (even to the extent of making you wonder if theyre freshly resurfaced overnight, every night). To be honest, I've seen wonderful graffiti in both Britain and the rest of Europe and some mindless squiggling of the black and white spraypainted territory tagging variety all over New York.

No, we're basically Russia - a couple of trapped neighbours and a few abused escapees, crumbling, kidding ourselves, and dead proud of it - only with a not executed royal family. Most of us can't even be arsed to know the history or geography of the neighbours or ourselves - even our weather presenters spew myth with the contradictory truth right behind them. Chernobyl finished off the Soviet Union - they realised the rot went so deep it didnt deserve saving. In England that would just fade into the 'mustn't grumble' morass of how its meant to be, along with blood scandals, thalidomide babies, sewage spills, and prejudice disguised as banter. God I hate it. Every small minded shabby bit of it. The thought of coming back there is almost too much to stand.

'Even the Swiss have more colourful graffiti' is the faintest praise I've ever heard.

Fangirl Three wrote:The east-west dry/wet thing is particularly noticeable in Scotland. Once you get over the 'pass' between Glasgow and Edinburgh there's an immediate difference on the eastern side, but you've only travelled about 15 miles.

Ironically, this morning there was thick fog on this eastern side of the pass, but when I got over the top and descended into Glasgow, it was clearer, and the sun came out.

Yet when I drove back east at lunchtime, it was still foggy here.

Is that haar? I think thats different from fog. Something to do with warm air on a cooling sea temperature maybe. They have something similar in California, called 'June gloom' - ocean still too cool for the heating air so vapour rises and looks like fog. Mainly a morning thing until the sun burns it off but can last all day. June isnt favoured in SoCal, for this reason.

An update from a friend in Tayport (just across from Dundee), showed not a cloud in the sky today during a sunny garden party for someones little kid. I see it was 23c. One photo showed a snarling child having sun tan lotion applied. Pretty standard early September weather for them. At least it didn't rain for the todders, and no haar rolled in to spoil it.

I don't think it was haar yesterday, or today, I think it's low cloud. The elevation here is 150m.

Same again today. Driving back from sunny, 20 C Glasgow this afternoon, ten miles up the M8, misty and 16 C.

Checking their media - same again today. All in the garden, blazing sunshine in Fife. They are of the 'post your lunch' variety, so easy to keep up with. If they're drinking in the sun in the garden, the world is party to it. So it seems like its the same as Glasgow, unusually for Glasgow.

I'll be spending most of October further just slightly down the coast myself, in the house I was in a few months ago, at the 'East Neuk'. I'll probably be killed by lightning after being enveloped in days of the thickest rainclouds anyone has ever known. Looking forward to it.