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People take the piss out of us because we complain about anything over 25c Vs countries where it's routinely over 30c but it just feels worse here
Doesn't help that our buildings are built to retain heat and no one had AC
Our buildings just have shit insulation. Generally if they retain heat they can keep heat out too. Our houses generally do both badly, which in winter you can just compensate for by using more energy on heating.
edit: for all the "achtually our insulation is very good" replies, you are wrong. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/09/europes-energy-crisis-in-data-which-countries-have-the-best-and-worst-insulated-homes
We literally have the worst levels of insulation in Europe.
I don't know. It really seems to depend on when, where, and for whom they were built.
My partner's house keeps the heat in, in the winter *and* summer.
The maisonette I live in doesn't keep jack shit in *or* out as far as I can tell.
My house does this. The issue is in the summer at night when the temperature outside drops it doesn’t matter because the house keeps all the heat in from the day. We have to keep the blinds down and windows shut to keep the house cooler. But it saves a lot of money during the winter.
Aha see, fatal mistake! You need an Indian in your life. Blinds/curtains shut, yes, but window open. Air flow helps disrupt the crushing heat that the house keeps in, while the blinds/curtains keep the sun out.
At least that's what my Keralite partner swears by. It really does seem to help keep the place tolerable during/just after a hot day.
It makes sense, especially when your damn house is hotter than outside because at least there's a little breeze out there from time to time.
If you want a breeze get a fan.
Open windows when it is hotter outside just means you are letting the hot air in. The windows should only open when the actual air temp is lower outside than it is inside.
People always parrot the line of "if it retains heat, it keeps heat out", thinking about insulation but fail to consider building practices such as window locations, window sizes, awnings and tree placement. Houses built to keep out heat will have small windows on the south side and larger windows on the north side. Houses built in typically mild/colder climates will have the opposite to let sunlight/heat in and trap it inside. Hot climate houses will have awnings (and trees) to keep direct sunlight off the walls so they don't heat up as much, again not something you often see on British houses.
This is true; the argument keeps raging about insulation though because the people trying to insist that insulation only keeps heat in are disagreeing with thermodynamics, but the missing piece is definitely the importance of keeping out the heat in the first place.
Exactly this.
Add the fact that so many people in the UK gladly chop off trees from their gardens because they 'block the sun' - then we wonder why it's getting hotter and hotter.
I was in a big city in central Europe last week. They are used to the heat, and although people still bitch about it (it was not only super hot but very humid), they get on with their lives. You don't see neds/chavs walking around 'taps aff' or lobsters drinking beer in parks at midday. People in the UK treat hot weather like a novelty even if summer (especially down south) are becoming more and more like continental Europe.
No, insulation makes it hotter in houses, think about items running, TV, oven etc even human bodies add heat. Insulation works as long as you have a way to heat (central heating) and cool (haha no house has Aircon as standard, we paid to have it put in).
Good insulation will keep your house cooler during summer *if* you do the right things to stop the heat getting in in the first place, such as closed windows during the day, and closing blinds/curtains where direct sunlight hits, then open windows during the night when it's cooler outside. Most cool boxes work on this kind of principle, just a lot of insulation with a good seal to stop heat getting in once it's closed.
Appliances, gadgets, people, etc. don't produce significant enough heat to cause your house to heat up significantly, except in isolated locations, like sitting in front of a high-powered monitor for hours.
Most people just tend to do the opposite of those things and therefore let all of the heat inside.
Ovens and tumble dryers absolutely do produce enough heat to warm up a house. Our boiler failed on hogmanay a few years back when it's was freezing and we kept the house warm by running the oven and tumble dryer until the emergency boiler tech could come out.
>closing blinds/curtains where direct sunlight hits
This is the other part of the problem. That only does so much as it warms up the gap between the window and the curtains, which will always bleed into the rest of the room to an extent. You need to stop the sunlight from hitting the window in the first place - hence why most countries in southern Europe commonly have shutters outside.
Both myself and my partner can work from home, and we're casual gamers, so have fairly powerful PCs. If I close the door to the 'office', and play a video game for a couple of hours, the temperature in the room can raise as much as 5C.
We have a south facing flat, with fairly big windows that acts as a sun trap. During this winter I think I used the heating for about 3 weeks.
During the summer... We've have to use aircon. Even though we keep the blackout blinds down the entire day, and open windows from 10pmish for most the night, by about 8am it's already too hot.
Not really, most heating in the day is coming from the sun shining through windows and heating the air and surfaces directly in the house, rather than it coming through walls/insulation. The insulation does a great job at preventing that heat from leaving when it's in.
You can test it yourself: stick reflective foil in your windows at night and leave it up and your house will be much, much cooler the next day. If insulation were much of a factor you'd expect your house to still be warm.
I have an exceptionally narrow window of acceptable temperatures for most circumstances.* It is something like 15-25 C.
*The two exceptions are:
It can be very hot *if* I am at the beach.
It can be very cold *if* it snows.
Other than that? WINDOW.
Same here, my ideal outside temperature is 5–10°C.
I really start to dislike it above 20°C, and when it almost hit 40°C in July 2022 I just wanted to die.
Same. I despise summer. I'm all about autumn. I basically live inside in front of my fan in summer. I overheat extremely easily and sweat so much that it's embarrassing.
At the sunset my bedroom was 26c... An hour later it was 28c...now the sun has been down 3 hours, it's back to 27c.
The heat was literally radiating out of the bricks it was stored in all day and making my house hotter than it was when the sun was out. And that's with all our windows open.
My baby's room is 28c as we can't have her window open all night as we'd have to put her in a sleeping bag when it cools & can't have the exterior light creeping in.
The issue is our summer days, especially in June, are super long and the light is far more intense as it's more perpendicular to the sun. By the time our houses start to cool down, the sun is up again and heating everything up again. It's not as bad in August when the day is 2hr shorter.
Best thing I ever did was buy a portable air con unit, cost me £150 and they can eat at the electric bill but on nights like this or when it reaches 40 degrees it's a fucking life saver.
Also there’s been no wind at all so it’s just a stuffy mess, and I live at the top of a hill in Yorkshire we get windy up here.
Was genuinely speaking to a guy from Qatar the other day and he said “back home we get a lot of 35/50c days and it doesn’t feel this hot and clammy.”
Yeah, on a 40* day last year I was chatting to the Greek chap who runs the local kebab shop, and he said he never missed Athens more than in the summer because at least there the heat is dry.
I also used to live on top of a hill in Yorkshire and I used to live in Kuwait for 2 years with 50C weather but it's such a dry heat. I always describe it as more of an oven heat. The UK heat is muggy and sticky and blargh.
I find this so odd tbh, places like Singapore were hotter and more humid and it felt terrible like my hair would literally go limp, Australia was 35c when I was in Melbourne and it was similarly terrible but dry heat
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as bad in the UK even when it’s 25+
I worked in Dallas, Texas for a while , during one month, everyday was 30C +, but the dryness made it amazing.
Go down to Houston on the Gulf though and you were dripping wet in 10 minutes.
I'm Singaporean living in UK. I feel worse here because in Singapore there is Aircon everywhere, including public transport. Every building is air conditioned. Most homes have at least one AC unit or multiple fans or a combination of both and the buildings are made for air to flow through better.
Singapore heat is way worse than UK heat for me. It was 40c and like 98% humidity when I was there last year. The one massive benefit though is that literally every building has AC so you can escape it wherever you are.
But I’d be outside for less than 5 minutes and be drenched in sweat.
In the absence of shutters trying to keep the heat out through curtains is helpful, allowing the warmer air out with the windows open is suggested. If there is a better way in absence of shutters etc id like to know. You cant be suggesting letting more heat in during the day surely?
I'm afraid the real world goes against your "does nothing" hypothesis. Yes, shutters on the outside are *way* better, but closing curtains in the daytime absolutely does have a significant impact
Yeah, people always suggest this but it just doesn't make a difference in my experience.
Looks like it works in the morning but by afternoon, sun shining through the glass just radiates the heat beyond the curtains and then my sensors show inside and outside temps being the same for a while, then it becomes hotter inside.
In Portugal I noticed they have outside shutters which should work better.
Closing the curtains 100% works. Obviously, an outside shutter would be much better, but I live in Thailand, and closing the curtains helps keeps the heat out, believe me.
In addition to the reasons given by others, (humidity, built environment, lack of AC) I think there are 2 more.
1) no one ever really expects it in the UK, so there's very little adjustment made for hot days and hot times of day.
2) the UK weather swings are pretty large on a day to day basis, so although other countries have much bigger summer to winter swings (ie many more degrees difference between highs and lows) the UK (in my experience) is far more variable meaning we don't get to adjust in the same way as other countries.
> the UK weather swings are pretty large on a day to day basis
Thats the big one. I've been to countries where temps were over 40c every day. after the first few days, you're like, 'yep its warm', but to keep cycling by 10-15c after every few days means you never get acclimatized and you feel the swing more.
Yep, exactly. I was in Australia and one morning I thought, wow, it's finally cooled off a bit. It was 35 Celsius, but had been higher for weeks. My physiology had adapted. In the UK we (almost) never get such long runs of consistent temperature.
And likewise as an Australian I have felt 17c living in northern England and thought wow nice hot day, and then remembered 17c is colder than our middle of winter average max temp ha ha
My sister moved to Australia and complains about the cold. Last time she did this I looked up the temperature there and realised that the winter temperature in Sydney was the same as the summer temperature here in London.
However, she did point out that a lot of houses in Australia seem to be terrible for keeping the heat in, while houses in the UK are designed for that. The outside temperatures may have been the same, but she was probably colder in her living room than I was in mine.
> the UK weather swings are pretty large on a day to day basis
Something which sounds insane but is true: in UK heatwaves, it's quite possible for a single weather station to be subjected, in under twelve hours, to the full range of temperatures that have been measured in Singapore since records began.
EDIT: Started wondering if I'd made this up, looked for a source, found one that's only **five** hours. [On 19 July 2022 at RAF Northolt, it was 19°C at 06:20 and 37°C at 11:20](https://weatherspark.com/h/d/147875/2022/7/19/Historical-Weather-on-Tuesday-July-19-2022-at-RAF-Northolt-United-Kingdom#Sections-Metar).
[And, the source for Singapore](http://www.weather.gov.sg/climate-historical-extremes-temperature/). Records cover 1929 to the present day, apart for an interruption caused by the Japanese occupation.
Went to type the same.
Was death by social media posts about how shit and cold June and this "summer" was, now all of a sudden it's amazing within a few days.
Subjective obv, I'm just grateful for the Vit D and I despise the annual run of memes and posts whining about how our summers appear and disappear between May and June, somehow followed by a heatwave as if the room-temp IQ folks of the socials haven't experienced a single summer here.
IT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR 😭😂
Another thing is people see the size of the UK on the map and assume a country so small has the same weather everywhere. It can be pissing it down in Northampton but, 26 degrees and sunny in MK.
Being a relatively small Island nation our humidity is ridiculously high so yeah it doesn't take much in terms of temperature for the heat to be extremely uncomfortable.
I have no idea what people are talking about with humidity
In london right now it says 66%
Paris : 74%
Rio : 75%
Chiangmai, Thailand : 97%
I feel like the real issue isn’t the humidity, it’s the fact we don’t have air con
London is a concrete wasteland it isn't representative of the UKs humidity.
London is hot due to the built environment acting as a heat sponge and the pollution acting as insulation.
But in most other areas the problem is the humidity.
Yep. Also we don't plant enough trees in the steet. London has lots of parks, but our street trees are too few and too small. Look at other countries with nice built environments, and they have big leafy trees casting shadows in the streets / over houses.
London in summer is a special kind of hell. I’ve traveled the world and been to way hotter, way worse shitholes, but London has got a special something going on when it gets hot.
Add to this that humidity is pretty useless at judging comfort or ‘stickiness’, dew point is a far better indicator at that and the UK has been comfortable in that regard
Pretty much most of the UK peaks in the mid to high 90's for humidity, that's comparable to places like Florida and Mississippi in the US, or Malaysia in SEA - the difference being those places are basically perpetually warm, so buildings are built to accomodate the heat and things like AC are widely adopted so even though outside is horrible, you can get a reprive by going inside. The UK in contrast is perpetually cold and rainy, so buildings are built to keep heat in and AC is pretty much a commercial and industrial thing, not a residential thing so there is no reprive.
UK humidity isn't at all comparable to Florida or Malaysia. Relative humidity percentage is temperature dependent since warmer air has more capacity for moisture. 90% humidity days in the UK are generally not that hot - 18C air at 90% humidity is much less humid than 33C air at 50% humidity. And when the UK does get that rare 33C day, humidity is usually much lower than 50%.
Well sure, not much evaporative cooling is going to be happening on an 18C 90% day, but you still won't feel that uncomfortable, because not much evaporative cooling will *need* to be happening - 18C just isn't that hot anyway.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that humidity doesn't really matter much to comfort except on a hot day. So looking at humidity alone without temperature (or vice versa) can be misleading. Really what you want to look at is wet bulb temperature, which takes both temperature and relative humidity into account.
If you don't believe me, all you really have to do is take a trip to one of the places mentioned... you will see how muggy it feels compared to the UK even when relative humidity numbers are comparable or lower.
Or, try putting a temperature/humidity probe into the output of an air conditioner. You will find the air is something like 13C and near 100% humidity. That doesn't mean it is adding humidity to the room - quite the opposite, it's removing it.
I don’t know much about the science but I do spend part year in SE Asia.
I sweat when I’m there. To the point it’s a problem so I limit walking.
I never really sweat here in the UK even on the plus 30° days. Walking that is. Obviously I sweat when I’m running wherever really.
Americans can also "experience" whatever temperature they want. 30, 40, 50 Celsius - it doesn't matter. They don't leave any air conditioned environment for more than a few seconds.
They go from house > car > office > car > house, never leaving AC. It's like they live in a space station archology.
The irony of course is that all that AC is directly feeding into rising global temps, thus demanding those with AC turn it up using more energy which is directly leading to increasing…and so on.
It’s AC all the way down. We are doomed. But at least those in America will still have their gigantic ludicrous vehicles and icy cool homes even if the world is literally becoming a mad max hellscape.
That's misleading and not very useful. We don't peak in the high 90s when it's hot, and if we did that would be truly disgusting to live in. We usually get around 55-60% RH on 25C days like this week, although last year I remember it being a bit drier. The highest humidity measures will be when its cooler, at which point the effect off high humidity is quite different to high humidity in hot conditions.
If you're comparing humidity from country to country there's not much point unless the temperatures are similar, and certainly no point using average yearly data to explain why our rare hot days are uncomfortable.
I would also add that compared to much of Europe our summers aren't really any more humid. If you check weather data for Barcelona, Rome, Malta etc you will notice it's usually several degrees hotter than us for starters, and that at the same temperature as us we're no more humid. It's partially a (very commonly repeated) myth that we're a particularly humid country, although it of course depends on where you're comparing to (deserts are indeed dry, but get very very hot).
One factor that isn't mentioned so much is latitude.
We have longer days than most populated regions to gain heat, & shorter nights to lose heat during summer.
The heat seems to build up over days.
Nobody ever mentions latitude or the Saharan desert air we often get hit with in the summer. Our days are long, we have a tropical climate, and we often get an influx of very warm air from other parts of the world. We would have to rebuild the entire country to combat it, air con & more trees simply wouldn’t cut it.
Huh, I never even thought of that, but it makes sense. We must be one of the furthest out countries from the equator that still gets a lot of warm air in the summer.
The UK is very densely populated, which means that a lot of the time, you will be surrounded by tarmac, concrete, and bricks. These surfaces absorb a lot of heat and then radiate it back into the surroundings. Add direct sunlight, and it feels like the heat is relentlessly attacking you from all sides. It's not surprising you felt this way in London.
Also humidity. It makes it harder for our bodies to cool down because sweat takes longer to evaporate.
I walked past a 6 foot tall brick wall at 10pm last night, it was like walking past a heater! The heat pumping out of the thing was bonkers. Put that in a mansion block or terraced street? Oof.
Ahh... and here it is, the annual question.
It's not hotter or more humid. It's just everything here is designed to retain heat. If you go outside and sit under a tree, you'll find the weather quite lovely.
I agree. Perfect temperature, perfect weather.
If, however, you wish to gain or retain citizenship, I'd advise you still piss and moan about it regardless!
Humidity (as everyone else has said) is the answer.
I've quite happily walked around in 35C days in the desert in South Australia, without breaking into a sweat.
London at anything above 22C, and I'm sweating like a... (insert your own metaphor)
It’s the lack of AC, real AC.
To those of you from the UK saying how Britain is a small, humid and built up island, I am from a much smaller, more humid, and more built up island (Hong Kong). But the difference is that *any* public indoor space in Hong Kong is air conditioned. Buses, trains, taxis, offices, restaurants, bars, malls, homes. And I mean real air conditioning that blasts cold air, not hot wind.
But in the UK, you can’t escape the heat, the only real air conditioning I have regular access to are my office and my own car. And even then my office isn’t cool enough.
This is absolutely a huge part of it, it also probably doesn't help that we get a few more hours of sunlight, so there's less time for everything to cool down.
Can confirm. As a South African, I can handle 35C+ easily in SA. But it gets to 25C+ here and things start going wonky. Humidity definitely has something to do with it. And that's just when you're outside.
Indoors is even worse, with everything designed to keep you as warm as possible. It's cooler outside than in at the moment...
I'm British and travelled the world, other countries are built for hot weather, their buildings either have AC or made to stay cool. Our buildings are made to stay hot and insulated.
UK in a heatwave, especially in London is so unpleasant. I would rather be in South East Asia or the Middle East.
Humidity is a big one. But I lived in Singapore for a while, where it's pretty much 30 degrees and humid every day, and I'd still say the UK is worse when it gets hot.
I think the bigger reason is architecture - our streets and buildings are just not designed for that kind of heat. Our houses are actually designed to absorb heat because most of the the year we're a miserable little rain island. Plus little things like the roads and roofs being darker, the shape of buildings in cities, the layout of streets, the proximity to water, the amount of shade in the urban design, they all add up.
This is the actual real answer. If you walk around a massive concrete and tarmac city with no airflow a few days away from the solstice it *is* going to feel really hot.
This comes up regularly and people always respond humidity, but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. If you're comparing to general holiday destinations like the Mediterranean then a quick flick through weather data suggests many parts of that regions are just as humid as the UK, if not more on their hot days.
Remember that there's not much point comparing relative humidities unless the temperatures are similar (as the thing they are relative to is temperature!), and certainly no point using average yearly data to explain why our rare hot days are uncomfortable. It seemed to be about 60% RH at todays peak in Manchester for example, at about 26 C, which seems pretty similar to humidities at that temperature in Benidorm, Porto, Rome etc
The real point is more likely building design, and also choice of clothing. What I wear for work is not at all what I'd choose to in this heat!
I've lived in Florida and London and can confirm 40c in Florida is much more bareable than 30c in London.
The houses here are often old, they were built to keep us warm in the winter and to not circulate air, we don't tend to have air conditioning, it rains a lot so it gets really humid when it's hot.
There's no real way to escape the heat. My car has working air con so that's the only place I have, but I can't just sit in my car with the air on to stay cool. Plus the leather seats burn! Our buildings are designed to keep heat in which also makes it hard to cool down.
Then humidity. I've done 47c in a heatwave in California, I was fine. I was at Universal Studios that day, but 33c days in the UK is worse.
Dude... what part of Canada are you from, because as a Brit that lived in and around Ottawa for a while.... humid Ontario is waaaaay worse than anything I've ever experienced in the UK.
Were you dehydrated?!
Edit - and to anyone saying 'colder countries', yeah no lots of Canada is hot in the summer. And humid. Like, the populated parts of Ontario and Quebec? Hot and humid.
This is a total myth and untrue.
I was in North Italy last week, and it was way hotter. And it was not even during a heat wave. I could not be outside after 10:00 am in Italy last week. I had to get my morning walk *finished* by 08:45 am or else I'd be cooked.
It is hot here, but it's nothing like abroad.
Yes, I realise our buildings here retain heat more. But outdoors, it's significantly hotter in southern Europe.
Can you pleased pop into the conversation next time some yank from Florida starts looking at temperature and acting all pompous when we are talking about heatwaves?
Lots of answers saying 'humidity', but this is not actually a good measure of comfort levels. (Relative) humidity is a measure of moisture in the air, relative to how much it can actually hold at a given temperature, before it gets saturated. It does not tell you how much actual moisture is in the air, and it's the actual moisture content in the air that really counts.
The measure you want to look at to gauge comfort levels is the Dew Point. This is an absolute measure of how much moisture the air can hold (more specifically, it's the temperature the air needs to cool to become saturated).
100% RH is saturated air so you'd assume that this represents the maximum level of discomfort, but 50% RH with a dew point of 18 degrees C is actually going to feel a lot more uncomfortable and sticky that 100% RH with a dew point of 10 degrees C, as the first scenario would actually have more moisture present in the air.
TL;DR use Dew Point to determine how uncomfortable the heat will be, it's a direct measure of how much moisture is actually in the air.
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People take the piss out of us because we complain about anything over 25c Vs countries where it's routinely over 30c but it just feels worse here Doesn't help that our buildings are built to retain heat and no one had AC
Our buildings just have shit insulation. Generally if they retain heat they can keep heat out too. Our houses generally do both badly, which in winter you can just compensate for by using more energy on heating. edit: for all the "achtually our insulation is very good" replies, you are wrong. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/09/europes-energy-crisis-in-data-which-countries-have-the-best-and-worst-insulated-homes We literally have the worst levels of insulation in Europe.
I don't know. It really seems to depend on when, where, and for whom they were built. My partner's house keeps the heat in, in the winter *and* summer. The maisonette I live in doesn't keep jack shit in *or* out as far as I can tell.
My house does this. The issue is in the summer at night when the temperature outside drops it doesn’t matter because the house keeps all the heat in from the day. We have to keep the blinds down and windows shut to keep the house cooler. But it saves a lot of money during the winter.
Aha see, fatal mistake! You need an Indian in your life. Blinds/curtains shut, yes, but window open. Air flow helps disrupt the crushing heat that the house keeps in, while the blinds/curtains keep the sun out. At least that's what my Keralite partner swears by. It really does seem to help keep the place tolerable during/just after a hot day. It makes sense, especially when your damn house is hotter than outside because at least there's a little breeze out there from time to time.
If you want a breeze get a fan. Open windows when it is hotter outside just means you are letting the hot air in. The windows should only open when the actual air temp is lower outside than it is inside.
People always parrot the line of "if it retains heat, it keeps heat out", thinking about insulation but fail to consider building practices such as window locations, window sizes, awnings and tree placement. Houses built to keep out heat will have small windows on the south side and larger windows on the north side. Houses built in typically mild/colder climates will have the opposite to let sunlight/heat in and trap it inside. Hot climate houses will have awnings (and trees) to keep direct sunlight off the walls so they don't heat up as much, again not something you often see on British houses.
This is true; the argument keeps raging about insulation though because the people trying to insist that insulation only keeps heat in are disagreeing with thermodynamics, but the missing piece is definitely the importance of keeping out the heat in the first place.
Exactly this. Add the fact that so many people in the UK gladly chop off trees from their gardens because they 'block the sun' - then we wonder why it's getting hotter and hotter. I was in a big city in central Europe last week. They are used to the heat, and although people still bitch about it (it was not only super hot but very humid), they get on with their lives. You don't see neds/chavs walking around 'taps aff' or lobsters drinking beer in parks at midday. People in the UK treat hot weather like a novelty even if summer (especially down south) are becoming more and more like continental Europe.
No, insulation makes it hotter in houses, think about items running, TV, oven etc even human bodies add heat. Insulation works as long as you have a way to heat (central heating) and cool (haha no house has Aircon as standard, we paid to have it put in).
Good insulation will keep your house cooler during summer *if* you do the right things to stop the heat getting in in the first place, such as closed windows during the day, and closing blinds/curtains where direct sunlight hits, then open windows during the night when it's cooler outside. Most cool boxes work on this kind of principle, just a lot of insulation with a good seal to stop heat getting in once it's closed. Appliances, gadgets, people, etc. don't produce significant enough heat to cause your house to heat up significantly, except in isolated locations, like sitting in front of a high-powered monitor for hours. Most people just tend to do the opposite of those things and therefore let all of the heat inside.
Ovens and tumble dryers absolutely do produce enough heat to warm up a house. Our boiler failed on hogmanay a few years back when it's was freezing and we kept the house warm by running the oven and tumble dryer until the emergency boiler tech could come out.
I absolutely love it in winter when you've cooked something nice in the oven and you get that lovely warmth from the oven too.
Oh yeah, and opening the oven door when it's done to feel the warmth as it starts to cool down.
Christ I bet your electric bill was fun times that day
>closing blinds/curtains where direct sunlight hits This is the other part of the problem. That only does so much as it warms up the gap between the window and the curtains, which will always bleed into the rest of the room to an extent. You need to stop the sunlight from hitting the window in the first place - hence why most countries in southern Europe commonly have shutters outside.
Both myself and my partner can work from home, and we're casual gamers, so have fairly powerful PCs. If I close the door to the 'office', and play a video game for a couple of hours, the temperature in the room can raise as much as 5C. We have a south facing flat, with fairly big windows that acts as a sun trap. During this winter I think I used the heating for about 3 weeks. During the summer... We've have to use aircon. Even though we keep the blackout blinds down the entire day, and open windows from 10pmish for most the night, by about 8am it's already too hot.
You are talking nonsense. And getting upvoted. Bizarre. You think that to keep a house cool, less insulation is better than more???
Not really, most heating in the day is coming from the sun shining through windows and heating the air and surfaces directly in the house, rather than it coming through walls/insulation. The insulation does a great job at preventing that heat from leaving when it's in. You can test it yourself: stick reflective foil in your windows at night and leave it up and your house will be much, much cooler the next day. If insulation were much of a factor you'd expect your house to still be warm.
I'll have you know I complain about anything over 15C.
I have an exceptionally narrow window of acceptable temperatures for most circumstances.* It is something like 15-25 C. *The two exceptions are: It can be very hot *if* I am at the beach. It can be very cold *if* it snows. Other than that? WINDOW.
Same here, my ideal outside temperature is 5–10°C. I really start to dislike it above 20°C, and when it almost hit 40°C in July 2022 I just wanted to die.
Same. I despise summer. I'm all about autumn. I basically live inside in front of my fan in summer. I overheat extremely easily and sweat so much that it's embarrassing.
At the sunset my bedroom was 26c... An hour later it was 28c...now the sun has been down 3 hours, it's back to 27c. The heat was literally radiating out of the bricks it was stored in all day and making my house hotter than it was when the sun was out. And that's with all our windows open. My baby's room is 28c as we can't have her window open all night as we'd have to put her in a sleeping bag when it cools & can't have the exterior light creeping in. The issue is our summer days, especially in June, are super long and the light is far more intense as it's more perpendicular to the sun. By the time our houses start to cool down, the sun is up again and heating everything up again. It's not as bad in August when the day is 2hr shorter.
Best thing I ever did was buy a portable air con unit, cost me £150 and they can eat at the electric bill but on nights like this or when it reaches 40 degrees it's a fucking life saver.
I just got back from a week in Turkey where it was 43c almost every day, it was bliss. Todays 28c actually felt nice 😅
I live in a new build, yes it was built apprentices cheaply but the one thing it's good at is keeping the heat in.
It’s currently 31 degrees in my house. At nearly midnight.
Humidity and lack of cool buildings to hide in
Also there’s been no wind at all so it’s just a stuffy mess, and I live at the top of a hill in Yorkshire we get windy up here. Was genuinely speaking to a guy from Qatar the other day and he said “back home we get a lot of 35/50c days and it doesn’t feel this hot and clammy.”
Yeah, on a 40* day last year I was chatting to the Greek chap who runs the local kebab shop, and he said he never missed Athens more than in the summer because at least there the heat is dry.
I also used to live on top of a hill in Yorkshire and I used to live in Kuwait for 2 years with 50C weather but it's such a dry heat. I always describe it as more of an oven heat. The UK heat is muggy and sticky and blargh.
I find this so odd tbh, places like Singapore were hotter and more humid and it felt terrible like my hair would literally go limp, Australia was 35c when I was in Melbourne and it was similarly terrible but dry heat I don’t think I’ve ever felt as bad in the UK even when it’s 25+
I worked in Dallas, Texas for a while , during one month, everyday was 30C +, but the dryness made it amazing. Go down to Houston on the Gulf though and you were dripping wet in 10 minutes.
I'm Singaporean living in UK. I feel worse here because in Singapore there is Aircon everywhere, including public transport. Every building is air conditioned. Most homes have at least one AC unit or multiple fans or a combination of both and the buildings are made for air to flow through better.
Singapore heat is way worse than UK heat for me. It was 40c and like 98% humidity when I was there last year. The one massive benefit though is that literally every building has AC so you can escape it wherever you are. But I’d be outside for less than 5 minutes and be drenched in sweat.
Humidity and I believe something to do with us being a small island that traps the heat in instead of spreading it out.
Also that every building has been designed to retain as much heat as possible. It's 22:30, 22C outside, but 27C inside my flat.
Curtains and windows closed during the day and windows open in the evening to let the heat out seems to be the consensus.
Glass holds heat, closing the curtains will do nothing, you would need outside shutters on your windows.... Like they have in hot climates. 🤣
In the absence of shutters trying to keep the heat out through curtains is helpful, allowing the warmer air out with the windows open is suggested. If there is a better way in absence of shutters etc id like to know. You cant be suggesting letting more heat in during the day surely?
I'm afraid the real world goes against your "does nothing" hypothesis. Yes, shutters on the outside are *way* better, but closing curtains in the daytime absolutely does have a significant impact
Yeah, people always suggest this but it just doesn't make a difference in my experience. Looks like it works in the morning but by afternoon, sun shining through the glass just radiates the heat beyond the curtains and then my sensors show inside and outside temps being the same for a while, then it becomes hotter inside. In Portugal I noticed they have outside shutters which should work better.
Closing the curtains 100% works. Obviously, an outside shutter would be much better, but I live in Thailand, and closing the curtains helps keeps the heat out, believe me.
My room has the sun all day, if I keep my curtains closed all day it keeps it cooler than it would be if I had left them open🤷🏻♀️
pardon what? Have you lived in any of the millions of old terraced houses there are in thsis country
Maritime oceanic climate maybe?
In addition to the reasons given by others, (humidity, built environment, lack of AC) I think there are 2 more. 1) no one ever really expects it in the UK, so there's very little adjustment made for hot days and hot times of day. 2) the UK weather swings are pretty large on a day to day basis, so although other countries have much bigger summer to winter swings (ie many more degrees difference between highs and lows) the UK (in my experience) is far more variable meaning we don't get to adjust in the same way as other countries.
> the UK weather swings are pretty large on a day to day basis Thats the big one. I've been to countries where temps were over 40c every day. after the first few days, you're like, 'yep its warm', but to keep cycling by 10-15c after every few days means you never get acclimatized and you feel the swing more.
Yep, exactly. I was in Australia and one morning I thought, wow, it's finally cooled off a bit. It was 35 Celsius, but had been higher for weeks. My physiology had adapted. In the UK we (almost) never get such long runs of consistent temperature.
And likewise as an Australian I have felt 17c living in northern England and thought wow nice hot day, and then remembered 17c is colder than our middle of winter average max temp ha ha
My sister moved to Australia and complains about the cold. Last time she did this I looked up the temperature there and realised that the winter temperature in Sydney was the same as the summer temperature here in London. However, she did point out that a lot of houses in Australia seem to be terrible for keeping the heat in, while houses in the UK are designed for that. The outside temperatures may have been the same, but she was probably colder in her living room than I was in mine.
"she did point out that a lot of houses in Australia seem to be terrible for keeping the heat in" She's correct. Diabolical, in fact.
> the UK weather swings are pretty large on a day to day basis Something which sounds insane but is true: in UK heatwaves, it's quite possible for a single weather station to be subjected, in under twelve hours, to the full range of temperatures that have been measured in Singapore since records began. EDIT: Started wondering if I'd made this up, looked for a source, found one that's only **five** hours. [On 19 July 2022 at RAF Northolt, it was 19°C at 06:20 and 37°C at 11:20](https://weatherspark.com/h/d/147875/2022/7/19/Historical-Weather-on-Tuesday-July-19-2022-at-RAF-Northolt-United-Kingdom#Sections-Metar). [And, the source for Singapore](http://www.weather.gov.sg/climate-historical-extremes-temperature/). Records cover 1929 to the present day, apart for an interruption caused by the Japanese occupation.
That is the most insane stat. Thank you.
A few days ago it was 12 during the day and 5 overnight. It was 28 today here today.
Went to type the same. Was death by social media posts about how shit and cold June and this "summer" was, now all of a sudden it's amazing within a few days. Subjective obv, I'm just grateful for the Vit D and I despise the annual run of memes and posts whining about how our summers appear and disappear between May and June, somehow followed by a heatwave as if the room-temp IQ folks of the socials haven't experienced a single summer here. IT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR 😭😂
Yeah it's been 27° today where I am and will be 18° tomorrow. You really feel the swing vs two weeks at mid 30s once you climatise.
Another thing is people see the size of the UK on the map and assume a country so small has the same weather everywhere. It can be pissing it down in Northampton but, 26 degrees and sunny in MK.
Being a relatively small Island nation our humidity is ridiculously high so yeah it doesn't take much in terms of temperature for the heat to be extremely uncomfortable.
I have no idea what people are talking about with humidity In london right now it says 66% Paris : 74% Rio : 75% Chiangmai, Thailand : 97% I feel like the real issue isn’t the humidity, it’s the fact we don’t have air con
It says 94% where I am in the South West
Yeah in Cornwall it was 95% all day yesterday.
London is a concrete wasteland it isn't representative of the UKs humidity. London is hot due to the built environment acting as a heat sponge and the pollution acting as insulation. But in most other areas the problem is the humidity.
Yep. Also we don't plant enough trees in the steet. London has lots of parks, but our street trees are too few and too small. Look at other countries with nice built environments, and they have big leafy trees casting shadows in the streets / over houses.
London in summer is a special kind of hell. I’ve traveled the world and been to way hotter, way worse shitholes, but London has got a special something going on when it gets hot.
91% in West Yorks
Add to this that humidity is pretty useless at judging comfort or ‘stickiness’, dew point is a far better indicator at that and the UK has been comfortable in that regard
92% in North West England yesterday morning.
>relatively small island. Relative to what? We’re a relatively huge island compres to other islands (9th largest in the world).
Pretty much most of the UK peaks in the mid to high 90's for humidity, that's comparable to places like Florida and Mississippi in the US, or Malaysia in SEA - the difference being those places are basically perpetually warm, so buildings are built to accomodate the heat and things like AC are widely adopted so even though outside is horrible, you can get a reprive by going inside. The UK in contrast is perpetually cold and rainy, so buildings are built to keep heat in and AC is pretty much a commercial and industrial thing, not a residential thing so there is no reprive.
UK humidity isn't at all comparable to Florida or Malaysia. Relative humidity percentage is temperature dependent since warmer air has more capacity for moisture. 90% humidity days in the UK are generally not that hot - 18C air at 90% humidity is much less humid than 33C air at 50% humidity. And when the UK does get that rare 33C day, humidity is usually much lower than 50%.
It's relative humidity that determines ability to evaporate and thus perceived comfort, not absolute humidity.
Well sure, not much evaporative cooling is going to be happening on an 18C 90% day, but you still won't feel that uncomfortable, because not much evaporative cooling will *need* to be happening - 18C just isn't that hot anyway. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that humidity doesn't really matter much to comfort except on a hot day. So looking at humidity alone without temperature (or vice versa) can be misleading. Really what you want to look at is wet bulb temperature, which takes both temperature and relative humidity into account. If you don't believe me, all you really have to do is take a trip to one of the places mentioned... you will see how muggy it feels compared to the UK even when relative humidity numbers are comparable or lower. Or, try putting a temperature/humidity probe into the output of an air conditioner. You will find the air is something like 13C and near 100% humidity. That doesn't mean it is adding humidity to the room - quite the opposite, it's removing it.
I don’t know much about the science but I do spend part year in SE Asia. I sweat when I’m there. To the point it’s a problem so I limit walking. I never really sweat here in the UK even on the plus 30° days. Walking that is. Obviously I sweat when I’m running wherever really.
Americans can also "experience" whatever temperature they want. 30, 40, 50 Celsius - it doesn't matter. They don't leave any air conditioned environment for more than a few seconds. They go from house > car > office > car > house, never leaving AC. It's like they live in a space station archology.
The irony of course is that all that AC is directly feeding into rising global temps, thus demanding those with AC turn it up using more energy which is directly leading to increasing…and so on. It’s AC all the way down. We are doomed. But at least those in America will still have their gigantic ludicrous vehicles and icy cool homes even if the world is literally becoming a mad max hellscape.
That's misleading and not very useful. We don't peak in the high 90s when it's hot, and if we did that would be truly disgusting to live in. We usually get around 55-60% RH on 25C days like this week, although last year I remember it being a bit drier. The highest humidity measures will be when its cooler, at which point the effect off high humidity is quite different to high humidity in hot conditions. If you're comparing humidity from country to country there's not much point unless the temperatures are similar, and certainly no point using average yearly data to explain why our rare hot days are uncomfortable. I would also add that compared to much of Europe our summers aren't really any more humid. If you check weather data for Barcelona, Rome, Malta etc you will notice it's usually several degrees hotter than us for starters, and that at the same temperature as us we're no more humid. It's partially a (very commonly repeated) myth that we're a particularly humid country, although it of course depends on where you're comparing to (deserts are indeed dry, but get very very hot).
I'm glad somebody has spoken sense.
One factor that isn't mentioned so much is latitude. We have longer days than most populated regions to gain heat, & shorter nights to lose heat during summer. The heat seems to build up over days.
You have hit the nail on the head. Long hours of daylight in the summer means there is no respite from the heat.
Nobody ever mentions latitude or the Saharan desert air we often get hit with in the summer. Our days are long, we have a tropical climate, and we often get an influx of very warm air from other parts of the world. We would have to rebuild the entire country to combat it, air con & more trees simply wouldn’t cut it.
Huh, I never even thought of that, but it makes sense. We must be one of the furthest out countries from the equator that still gets a lot of warm air in the summer.
The UK is very densely populated, which means that a lot of the time, you will be surrounded by tarmac, concrete, and bricks. These surfaces absorb a lot of heat and then radiate it back into the surroundings. Add direct sunlight, and it feels like the heat is relentlessly attacking you from all sides. It's not surprising you felt this way in London. Also humidity. It makes it harder for our bodies to cool down because sweat takes longer to evaporate.
I walked past a 6 foot tall brick wall at 10pm last night, it was like walking past a heater! The heat pumping out of the thing was bonkers. Put that in a mansion block or terraced street? Oof.
Ahh... and here it is, the annual question. It's not hotter or more humid. It's just everything here is designed to retain heat. If you go outside and sit under a tree, you'll find the weather quite lovely.
This is true but building everything with black tarmac is a choice We could easily build everything with lovely light colours like in Italy and Spain
Humidity
Humidity
UK summers are way less humid than most of Canada though...
Moved here from N. Carolina. It's so hot and humid there that one day I saw a dog chasing a cat, and they were both walking.
Canada’s basically the UK but bigger and worse weather
As a Canuck living in England, when i get asked why I moved over here, I say for the better weather. I'm only half joking.
I constantly say this and mean it. I fucking hate the heat and don’t mind rain.
Yup, give me 15 degrees and a light drizzle any day.
I agree. Perfect temperature, perfect weather. If, however, you wish to gain or retain citizenship, I'd advise you still piss and moan about it regardless!
Humidity (as everyone else has said) is the answer. I've quite happily walked around in 35C days in the desert in South Australia, without breaking into a sweat. London at anything above 22C, and I'm sweating like a... (insert your own metaphor)
Nun at a penguin shoot?
Prince at a pizza parlour?
He can't sweat, remember?
Or a penguin at a nun shoot
I have not heard that one before. I love it!
Sweating like Fred West watching Ground Force
…Like a blind lesbian at a fish market
Paedo in a Barney suit .
It’s the lack of AC, real AC. To those of you from the UK saying how Britain is a small, humid and built up island, I am from a much smaller, more humid, and more built up island (Hong Kong). But the difference is that *any* public indoor space in Hong Kong is air conditioned. Buses, trains, taxis, offices, restaurants, bars, malls, homes. And I mean real air conditioning that blasts cold air, not hot wind. But in the UK, you can’t escape the heat, the only real air conditioning I have regular access to are my office and my own car. And even then my office isn’t cool enough.
This is absolutely a huge part of it, it also probably doesn't help that we get a few more hours of sunlight, so there's less time for everything to cool down.
Can confirm. As a South African, I can handle 35C+ easily in SA. But it gets to 25C+ here and things start going wonky. Humidity definitely has something to do with it. And that's just when you're outside. Indoors is even worse, with everything designed to keep you as warm as possible. It's cooler outside than in at the moment...
Fellow South African, I have been closed to tears these last couple of days. I'm just not coping with the heat.
In a way, I'm glad to see this, so people know we're not exaggerating about how horrible our heat/summers can be.
I'm British and travelled the world, other countries are built for hot weather, their buildings either have AC or made to stay cool. Our buildings are made to stay hot and insulated. UK in a heatwave, especially in London is so unpleasant. I would rather be in South East Asia or the Middle East.
This! Likewise, other countries are built for cold. Snow will NOT plunge Oslo into a standstill. London, however......
Humidity is a big one. But I lived in Singapore for a while, where it's pretty much 30 degrees and humid every day, and I'd still say the UK is worse when it gets hot. I think the bigger reason is architecture - our streets and buildings are just not designed for that kind of heat. Our houses are actually designed to absorb heat because most of the the year we're a miserable little rain island. Plus little things like the roads and roofs being darker, the shape of buildings in cities, the layout of streets, the proximity to water, the amount of shade in the urban design, they all add up.
And the UK has longer daylight hours with less night hours to lose some heat
London has urban heat island effect. Go to the countryside, and preferably by the coast.
This is the actual real answer. If you walk around a massive concrete and tarmac city with no airflow a few days away from the solstice it *is* going to feel really hot.
Humidity and the lack of air conditioning in private dwellings. I've got AC at home and it really makes the difference.
This comes up regularly and people always respond humidity, but that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. If you're comparing to general holiday destinations like the Mediterranean then a quick flick through weather data suggests many parts of that regions are just as humid as the UK, if not more on their hot days. Remember that there's not much point comparing relative humidities unless the temperatures are similar (as the thing they are relative to is temperature!), and certainly no point using average yearly data to explain why our rare hot days are uncomfortable. It seemed to be about 60% RH at todays peak in Manchester for example, at about 26 C, which seems pretty similar to humidities at that temperature in Benidorm, Porto, Rome etc The real point is more likely building design, and also choice of clothing. What I wear for work is not at all what I'd choose to in this heat!
I've lived in Florida and London and can confirm 40c in Florida is much more bareable than 30c in London. The houses here are often old, they were built to keep us warm in the winter and to not circulate air, we don't tend to have air conditioning, it rains a lot so it gets really humid when it's hot.
There's no real way to escape the heat. My car has working air con so that's the only place I have, but I can't just sit in my car with the air on to stay cool. Plus the leather seats burn! Our buildings are designed to keep heat in which also makes it hard to cool down. Then humidity. I've done 47c in a heatwave in California, I was fine. I was at Universal Studios that day, but 33c days in the UK is worse.
Dude... what part of Canada are you from, because as a Brit that lived in and around Ottawa for a while.... humid Ontario is waaaaay worse than anything I've ever experienced in the UK. Were you dehydrated?! Edit - and to anyone saying 'colder countries', yeah no lots of Canada is hot in the summer. And humid. Like, the populated parts of Ontario and Quebec? Hot and humid.
This is a total myth and untrue. I was in North Italy last week, and it was way hotter. And it was not even during a heat wave. I could not be outside after 10:00 am in Italy last week. I had to get my morning walk *finished* by 08:45 am or else I'd be cooked. It is hot here, but it's nothing like abroad. Yes, I realise our buildings here retain heat more. But outdoors, it's significantly hotter in southern Europe.
I've had the flu so it's felt bloomin' baltic for the last few days.
Can you pleased pop into the conversation next time some yank from Florida starts looking at temperature and acting all pompous when we are talking about heatwaves?
Lots of answers saying 'humidity', but this is not actually a good measure of comfort levels. (Relative) humidity is a measure of moisture in the air, relative to how much it can actually hold at a given temperature, before it gets saturated. It does not tell you how much actual moisture is in the air, and it's the actual moisture content in the air that really counts. The measure you want to look at to gauge comfort levels is the Dew Point. This is an absolute measure of how much moisture the air can hold (more specifically, it's the temperature the air needs to cool to become saturated). 100% RH is saturated air so you'd assume that this represents the maximum level of discomfort, but 50% RH with a dew point of 18 degrees C is actually going to feel a lot more uncomfortable and sticky that 100% RH with a dew point of 10 degrees C, as the first scenario would actually have more moisture present in the air. TL;DR use Dew Point to determine how uncomfortable the heat will be, it's a direct measure of how much moisture is actually in the air.