An interesting snippet from Paul Simons Weather Eye in yesterday’s Times.
Snowdon is one of the wettest places in Britain, with 180 inches a year. But Hawarden just 50 miles to the east (close to Chester), gets only 24 inches year – about the same as London, over 200 miles away in the relatively parched south east.
A fact which must have pleased William Gladstone because it meant that the weather did not interrupt his log-chopping too much.
The reason is because of the protection from Atlantic winds provided by the mountains of Snowdonia themselves.
Curiously, though, Amlwch on the western tip of the island of Anglesey some 30 miles on the Atlantic side of Snowdon also gets relatively less rain & more sun; this was always explained to me – as a child sitting sunbathing on the beach while looking at the dark clouds inland – by the fact that the clouds coming from America dropped their load of water only when they got hooked up on the mountain.
Of course these are not the only parts of this country where the weather can vary so markedly within a few short miles – fact which a is a cause of so much frustration & gloom when we are having such an unsettled spell as we are now – in the middle of July.
