Last winter wasn't. We barely had the heating on at all. Year before wasn't that bad.
I always find the people who care a lot about the weather to be rather idle-minded. Unless your main intellectual past time is playing golf i'm not sure how it can affect you. If you are busy doing something awesome the last thing you are going to care about is the rain.
For someone who grew up in a much sunnier climate (South Africa), it can be crushingly oppressive at times.
Also I visit South Africa 4-5 times a year and I don't notice my daily routine change much from London apart from driving more. If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.
Oh, so then the weather matters after all. Apparently it matters so much that it has affected the whole work-hour traditions of Spain. Huh.
"Weather" can be pointless wringing, and it can also be complaints from people who live in a climate that necessitates both air conditioning in the summer to avoid heat strokes on the worst days, and heating in the winter to avoid freezing (both themselves and their plumbing). It involves people who have to worry about changing tires on their car when the winter comes. It involves people who sometimes wake up and have to shovel 1 meter height of snow to be able to get out of the house. It involves urban inhabitants that have to worry about the level of pollution in the air which varies based on how cold the weather is and how much it is raining.
Where I live, the weather is probably mostly a slight inconvenience. For you, who lives in the British Isles? I'm guessing an oceanic climate, which even if it is pretty cold in the winter it is probably not frigid, no? And in turn, perhaps overall cool summers. So overall a pretty even distribution of temperatures over the year; seldom cold, mostly cool to slightly warm. Yeah, you're probably not inconvenienced by the weather, compared to a lot of people elsewhere.
Public transport in London is often thrown into chaos by 2 or 3 inches of snow.
I've never understood people who don't like the variety of weather and seasons. It must be so so boring to not experience, or enjoy weather.
I think the obsession with "good weather" is very very unhealthy. Just think about the kind of people who move to the south of Spain to live in disgusting British ex-pat filled towns. Largely feeble minded grotesques you couldn't have anything more than a polite conversation with. Look at Florida for an american equivalent.
Further it would be interesting to see how productivity intersects with climate. A historical view on Europe's changing climate would be most interesting from a historical perspective.
It'd be amazingly unhealthy to be in a permanent state of "contentedness" for the rest of your life like some drugged up zombie. We need the bad days, the sadness, the anger, the whole range of emotions, so that we appreciate the other emotions, and feel truly alive.
There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".
> There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".
That's a bad comparison. Some people have one kind of preference - sunny. Others both like to go skiing and to go water-skiing.
Variation in all aspects of life is what keeps us grounded and gives us reference points.
But end of off-topic hijacking for me...
As an adventurer? The weather can be much more of an inconvenience to an "adventurer" (which I guess has something to do with being outdoors) than to the average modern, white/blue collar worker, person.
Too cold a weather might mean that you have to be very mindful of what you are wearing and adjust it to your activity level; wear too much while you are active and you get sweaty, which means that you in turn get colder. Wear too little and you start freezing. Even changing attire between activity levels can be difficult, since you sometimes have to undress partially in order to change attires, which might be enough of a room to leave you freezing. Too cold weather might mean that your equipment stops functioning because something froze. Too cold weather might mean that you have a hard time doing anything precise with your hands, because your wooly mittens don't lend themselves to that kind of work.
Then perhaps the weather gets milder; now you have to question whether you are able to cross that river on that ice. Also perhaps beware of snow avalanches.
A lot of rain might mean that you get, you know, wet, perhaps most of the stuff you have. Now you have to carry around wet tents etc. because you didn't have time to dry anything. Perhaps you even have to go to bed in a wet sleeping bag. Good luck trying to sleep.
That is just normal weather - not even going into things like storms.
None of what I described was extreme, really.
PS: I live in the bit of the UK that isn't London. There is quite a lot of that.
Continental climates have distinct seasons, (almost) by definition. That's certainly a kind of variability.
PS we seem to be keen on silent downvoting again. Parent post makes a perfectly valid point that allowed me to clarify my comment (timescales).
If you're comparing a British winter to a southern hemisphere "winter", sure it's not a great place to be. But for the mostpart, London is actually pretty good for it's winter. Yes you occasionaly get snow which is great for a day or two and then it turns to slush and ice and ends up being annoying, but really London is mild compared to the rest of the UK.
It is a big adjustment going from a southern hemisphere country to northern, so I don't blame you if you can't take it, but really it's not that bad here.
Bangkok is not in the Southern Hemisphere. It's in the N. Hemisphere, though relatively close to the equator.
Now I find people I hoped to see regularly if I moved to centralish London are moving out anyway. They are moving further away into Kent, Surrey, so on.
Miss them very much now I've moved away from Oxford and living about the same distance away from London to the North, where trains are my only option.
Granted I tend to meet people centrally after work, since its convenient for everyone, but its not been too bad.
There's an easy solution though: get a bike, and try and pursuade your friends to cycle too. It's rare that it takes me more than 30 minutes to meet up now (which equates to travelling around 7 miles on a bike).
But then cities are generally like that - very lonely places swarming with strangers.
The striking thing about London is that EVERYWHERE is an hour away, and that impacts your social life. Unless you live or work next to your friends, prepare to see them rarely. In both Bangkok and Oxford, social life was effortless - someone would SMS you in the afternoon, and you'd swing by some restaurant or bar on your way home to see them. Oxford, everywhere was trivially walkable, Bangkok taxis are virtually free, but London? It's an hour on the tube. Because of this, everyone is BUSY. Busy all the time. If I want to see my friends, I book 6 weeks in advance - and I live relatively central (Zone 2, Camden).
Summer in London is amazing - the parks are fantastic, there are some good bars ... winter is cold, rainy, and grey, and bluntly we're moving from London because we can't take another winter here.
Just my 2p.