Weather in Amsterdam....

Complaining about the weather is a world-famous British past time.

We complain when it's cold and wet; which is most of the time. We complain when it's too sunny and we're banned from watering our plants. We complain about an inch of snow, gusts of wind, patches of fog and the glorious 'well I guess that was our one day of summer' British summer.

For me personally, as a white blonde haired Irish person, I love the British Isles weather.

The thing is; you know what you're going to get. We don't experience drastic fluctuations between sub-zero winters and boiling hot summers. We don't (generally) have to put snow chains on tyres... or crank up the air-conditioning. In fact, home air conditioning is really very uncommon in Britain.

The joyous British weather plods along nicely throughout the year. Plenty of rain, little bit of sunshine, with temperatures on average between 2 degrees and 22 degrees (with the odd economy halting snow flurry).

I'm delighted to report that the weather in Amsterdam doesn't appear to be too far removed from my natural habitat.

I found this handy little graph on Amsterdam Advisor.com (link in title) showing the temperature and rainfall patterns of Amsterdam.

With an average maximum of about 22 Degrees in the summer and a minimum of Zero in winter, I think I could adapt quite nicely.

Now I know there are exceptions; I know that canals can freeze and rivers can dry up. But for me, it's comforting to find a weather graph that doesn't make me feel nauseous whilst looking at a 'continuous 3 month summer period of over 40 degrees daily'........as per Alice Springs in Australia.

People always ask me 'if you hate the sun so much, how on earth did you live in Australia for over a year?' ....simple. Venture out only at night and on the rare occasions you do creep during the day time; factor 50 sunscreen, hat and full length sleeves.