Climate data

[fivemack]

Britain may be a nation of peculiarly obsessive meteorologists with a dearth of institution-destroying political action in the last fifty years, but a consequence of this is that we've got peculiarly wonderful climate data recorded, from which maps like this and this can be produced, leading to awkward questions like 'why isn't Ipswich, being as it is so dry and sunny, thronged by mobs of pasty English tourists'?

Does anyone know of such maps, at a reasonable resolution (being able to see individual Welsh mountains is clearly excessive, but this isn't really accurate enough) for continental Europe? It was clear that there was a lot of climactic variation between Gdansk and Krakow, I'd be interested to know what it is that balances out the sunniness of La Rochelle to leave it as unpopulated as it is.

Comments

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Legacy of the Hugeunot purges, perhaps? ;)

[meirion.livejournal.com]

i haven't moved there yet ;-)

no, seriously, if i weren't contemplating moving to corsica, i think la rochelle would be my next choice (though it's not as inexpensive as other bits of france i've contemplated moving to).

-m-

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about population density in France but south and southeast of the LR patch are extensive and famous vineyards. The area does have a lot of sunshine but also fearsome storms in the summer.

We timed our holidays to avoid travelling when all the French did, so we got to see the headlines about 10km tailbacks north of Bordeaux in Sud-Ouest.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Absolutely everything I know about La Rochelle is in the context of people trying to get ships into and out of it, from the Napoleonic wars to WWII, if you count u-boats as ships.

Throughout all of history and my life, I've never heard it mentioned otherwise.

So, still there, eh? People still trying to get ships in and out?

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

It's a pity there doesn't seem to be a way to find out how much rainfall fell in a particular place (e.g. Glasgow) in the last day or so, though (unless it was in the top 10 for rainfall).
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology seems to provide much more useful information, oddly enough.