The rain stays mainly in the plain

After roughly a hundred days of careful scientific observation I can present a stunning conclusion:

English weather is better than Dutch weather.

That was the headline. Now let me refine my position a little bit so that it actually becomes defensible: Yorkshire weather is better than Twente weather. I claim that this is true in at least one sense: there are fewer boring, gray, continually overcast days over here.

I won't say that there is a great difference in rainfall. Inhabitants of both the Netherlands and England love to complain that they live in a very rainy country, but as a bicyling commuter I can tell you that there are maybe two or three times in a year of roughly four hundred trips back and forth where I really get soaking wet. (This evening that happened here for the first time.) On the whole rain is much overestimated, both in duration and in density. Gray days, on the other hand, can really get me down.

I am no climatologist, but it seems to me that there must be a causal relation with the wind, which I feel is much stronger here on average than I am used to. No clouds can persist for a whole day in such exuberant airs! I see a parallel with Terschelling, one of the the islands off the coast of the Netherlands, which is my favourite holiday destination: no day without sunshine, and if it happens to rain, even heavily, then this will typically not last more than half a day tops.

Wet conditions (what is it you shouldn't do?)

So there! Disagree all you like, tell me that the west of England is wetter than the east and the west of the Netherlands sunnier than the east (both true), tell me that a hundred days of observation is not enough to come to a sweeping statement like this. I know it all already, and I will let my conclusion stand.

What is not better in York is the state of the roads. They are bad even when it is dry but most definitely when it rains. There are potholes everywhere, and the drainage is simply afwul. A few hours of rain will create extensive puddles, and of course these optically egalise the roads, in other words you do not see the potholes any more. Not the best cycling conditions. I have already remarked several times on the wet condition of the land and the flexible level of the river. I wonder wat a good Dutch water engineer would make of this.