Rainfall is fairly well distributed throughout the year, although March to June are the driest months and October to January the wettest

Ireland is in rather a different category, for here the rain-bearing winds have not been deprived of their moisture, and much of the Irish plain receives up to 1,200 mm of rainfall per year, usually in the form of steady and prolonged drizzle. Snow, on the other hand, is rare, owing to the warming effects of the Gulf Stream. The combined influences of the sea and prevailing winds are equally evident in the general pattern of rainfall over the country.

Because of the North Atlantic Drift and predominantly maritime air masses that reach the British Isles from the west, the range in temperature throughout the year is never very great. The annual mean temperature in England and Wales is about 10°C, in Scotland and Northern Ireland about 9°C. July and August are the warmest months of the year, and January and February the coldest.

The mean winter temperature in the north is 3*C, the mean summer temperature 12°C. The corresponding figures for the south are 5°C and 16°C. The mean January temperature for London is 4°C, and the mean July temperature 17°C.

During a normal summer the temperature may occasionally rise above 30°C in the south. Minimum temperatures of -10°C may occur on a still clear winter's night in inland areas.

The distribution of sunshine shows a general decrease from south to north - the south has much longer periods of sunshine than the north.

It is frequently said that Great Britain does not experience climate, but only weather. This statement suggests that there is such a day-to- day variation in temperature, rainfall, wind direction, wind speed and sunshine that the "average weather conditions" implied by the term climate have little real meaning. However, too much stress should not be laid on these short-term changes. Monthly climatic statistics show quite clearly that although the British Isles experience from time to time unusual or even exceptional weather conditions, there is usually no very great variation from year to year or between corresponding seasons of different years.

No place in Britain is more than 120 km from the sea. But although the British are crowded very closely in a very small country, there is one respect in which they are very fortunate. This is their climate. Perhaps, this is a surprising statement because almost everyone has heard how annoying the weather usually is in England. Because of the frequent clouds and the moisture that hangs in the air even on fairly clear days, England has less sunshine than most countries, and the sunlight is weaker than in other places where the air is dry and clear. What is worse, sunshine rarely lasts long enough for a person to have time to enjoy it. The weather changes constantly. No ordinary person can guess from one day to another which season he will find himself in when he wakes in the morning. Moreover, a day in January may be as warm as a warm day in July and a day in July may be as cold as the coldest day in January.

But although the English weather is more unreliable than any weather in the world, the English climate - average weather — is a good one. English winters are seldom very cold and the summers are seldom hot. Men ride to work on bicycles all through the year. Along the south coast English gardens even contain occasional palm trees.

The most remarkable feature of English weather, the London fog, has an exaggerated reputation. What makes fog thick in big industrial areas is not so much the moisture in the air as the soot from millions of coal fires. Such smogs (smoke+fog) are not very frequent today. Since 1956 as a result of changes in fuel usage and the introduction of clean air legislation, they have become less severe. It is quite natural that in fine, still weather there is occasionally haze in summer and mist and fog in winter.

The amount of rainfall in Britain is exaggerated, too. Britain seems to have a great deal of rain because there are so many showers. But usually very little rain falls at a time. Often the rain is hardly more than fi floating mist in which you can hardly get wet. Although a period of as °ng as three weeks without rain is exceptional in Britain.

It is no wonder that, living in such an unreliable climate with so many rules and with still more exceptions, the Englishmen talk a lot about the weather. Because they adore their weather, whatever it may be, and their climate, too.

Mineral Wealth

The rise of Britain as an industrial nation in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was partly due to the presence of considerable mineral resources. They provided raw materials as well as sources of power. She possessed abundant supplies of coal and iron ore, the two chief minerals on which the Industrial Revolution was based.

Britain had enough non-ferrous metals - copper, lead, and tin, for example, to meet her needs for a time. But in the course of the last hundred years or so the situation has gradually changed. Many of Britain's most valuable and accessible deposits have been worked out. Moreover, coal had lost some of its former importance, and such minerals as petroleum and uranium ores have become essential materials in the modern world.

At the same time British industry has been one increasingly orientated towards lighter industry, and the heavier coal-based industries have tended to decrease as the dependence upon coal as a source of power has declined. The absence in Great Britain of high- grade iron ore, manganese, chrome, nickel and many other rare metals makes her economy greatly dependent on imported raw materials.

COAL. Coal has been worked in Britain for 700 years. It was first obtained on a commercial scale as far back as the 13th century, mostly in North-East England, from sites where the coal seams actually came out to the surface and where the nearby rivers or coast provided a means of transport. As an industry, coal-mining has been in existence for over 300 years, twice as long as in any other European country. For over a century coal was the most important source of power and fuel in Britain.

Great Britain possessed the richest and most accessible coalfields containing the best coal of any world region. Traditionally Britain is a coal-exporting country. In the early years of the 20th century coal

production exceeded demands and huge quantities were exported. The record year was 1913 when 287 million tons of coal were mined, of which 73 million tons were exported.

The most important coal deposits are to be found in such industrial regions as Yorkshire, Lancashire, North-East England, the Midlands, South Wales and Central Scotland.

Most coal comes from Yorkshire and the Midlands, which produce about 60 per cent of British output. These fields are the easiest to mine because the coal seams are particularly thick.

However, with the introduction of new sources of power and fuel the production of coal has decreased considerably and constitutes at present about 100 million tons. Although many good seams of coal have now been worked out due to the early development of the industry, total coal reserves in Britain are estimated at 190,000 million tons, which are sufficient for at least three hundred years at the present rate of consumption.

OIL and GAS. As the importance of coal has declined, oil has become of increasing significance. Up to the early 1960s over 99 per cent of Britain's petroleum requirements were imported, primarily from the Middle Eastern countries. Since then considerable discoveries of crude oil and natural gas have been made in the North Sea. The first oil was brought ashore in 1975.

The production of oil has risen fast, amounting in 1987 to 123 million tons, and since then the United Kingdom became an oil exporting nation.

The most important offshore oilfields are to be found off the coasts of eastern and northern Scotland and north-east England. By the 1990s over 40 fields produced oil, the largest of them being Brent, Forties, Ekofisk and others. The principal oil-producing area lies between the latitudes of the Tyne and Shetland Islands, but known to extend to the latitudes of Iceland. About two thousand kilometres of submarine pipeline have been built to bring ashore oil from the North Sea oilfields.

Today Great Britain is completely self-sufficient in oil but, in spite of this, the location of the oil refining industry still reflects the period when the country depended fully on imports. The principal refineries inevitably have coastal locations: Milford Haven, the Thames estuary, Southampton, Merseyside, Grangemouth, etc.

For many years gas was produced from coal and had important applications as fuel for domestic gas stoves and systems of central heating, in steel-making and in other industrial processes. In the 1960s, however, several discoveries of natural gas were made on the continental shelf off the east coast of Britain, in the bed of the North Sea. Natural gas usually occurs with petroleum, and much of the world output comes from oilfields. A large-scale offshore gas production in Britain began in 1967. To date home-produced natural gas accounte