I live in Manchester and the weather is atrocious. We had maybe one sunny, warm week and then the rest of the time it’s oscillated between bright sun and heavy rain often several times a day.
Today, it started off great, then threw it down, then went sunny, then threw it down with lightening, now it’s sunny again.
That’s two years of atrocious weather – will it ever improve?
Well, I am not living in Britain but I have lived half my life in Belgium, just south of you, and the other half in Norway, just east of you.
During the 61 years of my life, sailing most of it and now, flying for a decade, I have seen all kind of weather and I can tell you this: Apart from half a degree increased in the annual temperature, the weather has been boringly the same during that time.
But …
We remember the day it rained so much and the week it was so hot and the day of that storm, etc. We don’t remember all the average days between those.
Yes, the climate (not the weather) has changed. I have seen the glaciers of Norway to shrink and what was the short bushes around my mountain cabin 30 years ago, are now short trees.
The "warm week" we got at the end of June was what happens often in June: A stationary high pressure that blocks the passing of low pressures. It happens on the average three times a year, in June, September and January. This year, it was spot on time!
Then came back the usual weather in our latitudes: a low pressure followed by a high pressure ridge, then another low pressure.
In fact, I once read in an English maritime meteorology book that if it rains in the UK, there is 70 percent chances that the sun will shine the day after. And if it does, there is 70 percent chances that it will rain the day after.
This is because it takes about 24 hours for a low pressure moving at about 20 knots to give place to a high ridge, then another 24 hours for the next low to come in.
It is exactly this mild and fertile climate that made the north of Europe the leading nations of the world in the past centuries. Perhaps we like sunshine but the farmer likes also rain and here, he gets both.