In his 1852 novel Bleak House, Charles Dickens wrote, ‘The rain is ever falling, drip, drip, drip, by day and night.’ Talking about the weather — rain, especially — is arguably part of British culture. It’s certainly true that the sheer unpredictability of British weather over different timescales often makes it a good topic of conversation.
The British Isles sit in a region where warm air from the tropics meets cold air from the polar regions because of planetary-scale atmospheric convection currents. This boundary, known as the polar front, is a major driver of weather variability and volatility. Low-pressure systems called depressions result from the interaction of these contrasting air masses, leading to rapid changes in weather conditions. Depressions bring unsettled weather, including rain, strong winds, and sometimes even snow.
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