Comment by walnutclosefarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by walnutclosefarm | Hacker News Reader

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walnutclosefarm

> That's right; we don't have it because it's bloody cold there, a lot of the time. In fact our Summers are only temperate because of the Gulf Stream

I don't know where you've landed in the United States, but the notion that Europe is "bloody cold a lot of the time" suggests you don't actually know much about either cold, or continental interior temperatures. There isn't a single month of the year in which the average Low temperature is below freezing in most of Western Europe, outside of the Nordic countries. Contrast that to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the average daytime High temperature is below freezing for a quarter of the year. You have to go way East into the continental interior - Moscow or further - to find temperatures that are comparably cold.

The interior cities in North America that are at comparable latitudes to Europe - Winnipeg, and Edmonton, e.g., - now there you get some actual "bloody cold." The air at -40C (or F) has a special quality to it.

Europe does indeed have generally milder summers, due to its maritime exposure and the Gulf Stream, but also due to it's more Northern latitude, but "bloody cold" it is not.

I lived in Ochils in Scotland up by Stirling way, and we had 2 larders. One full of tins for when we were snowed in, and one for normal use. We used the snowed-in one most years.

It's hard to say it wasn't bloody cold when the snow is 8' up the walls and you can't get out the door.

I wouldn't say Scotland's climate is representative. European countries can have vastly different local weather conditions and just because there's so much rain in the north western part (Great Britain, Netherlands, ...) it's mostly because of their more oceanic climate, which isn't comparable to e.g. central europe (Germany, Austria, ...).

I won't argue with your experience at that location, but even in Scotland, for most of the population there is no month when the average low temperature is below freezing. Edinburgh, e.g., is barely colder in January than Memphis Tennessee, in the US.

To the point about air conditioning, however, Summer is a whole different matter. Memphis in July is easily 15C, and maybe more, warmer than Edinburgh.

What you say is likely to be true now, but only because of the huge climate warming that has occurred during the last 50 years, which seems to be more obvious in Europe than in other places.

When I was a child in Europe, around the 45 degrees latitude, there was permanent snow cover during 3 to 4 months of each year, and in almost all days the temperature at noon was below freezing. Sometimes there was a week or two with day temperatures down to minus 20 Celsius degrees, or even less.

In the same place now, the winters are mostly without any snow. Even when it happens to snow, one or two days per winter, it melts the next day, because the day temperature is above freezing.

Nevertheless, this is a very recent phenomenon, and not how the climate was until the last century.

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