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Ah, the weather – that failsafe topic that you can always reach for when stuck in a lift with your terrifying boss or when faced with an awkward run-in on the tube. London weather gets a bad rep for being mostly grey and rainy, but surely it can't have rained all year? To give you some ammunition for any conversational lulls you face in the festive season, we're looking back at London's most extreme weather in 2015.
As if there weren't enough reasons to feel grumpy in January, Londoners were hard done by on the snow front too. There was a brief flurry of the white stuff but you'd have been hard-pushed to get even one snowball out of it.
This is the closest its been to snow in London so far pic.twitter.com/MqRjG6TAmj
— YUNG-T✨ (@Tasm0n_D) January 29, 2015
Much like January, February was mainly cold and uneventful on the weather front. But it all kicked off in March when London had its first solar eclipse for 14 years. Londoners eagerly fashioned their makeshift pinhole projectors and were ready to soak up the dramatic views of the eclipse, but it turns out all we got was this:
Stunning eclipse in Central London... pic.twitter.com/KDijMbZpsq
— Craig Woodhouse (@craigawoodhouse) March 20, 2015
No, that picture isn't taking ages to load – that disappointing mass of grey nothingness really was it. But at least it gave us all something to talk about, eh? Here's another excellent pic, because we're sure you can't get enough of these dazzling views:
Eclipse 2015 London. #onceinalifetime #rememberthismoment pic.twitter.com/vqyLyTkYXw
— dan barker (@danbarker) March 20, 2015
In May, the weather started fighting back. Londoners were just walking around, minding their own business, when gusts of wind started unexpectedly flinging weird spiky stuff into our general direction. Sounds unpleasant, no? Well, it was. But we got to the bottom of it and found out that those pesky plane trees were to blame.
Things started picking up in summer - and the sun actually came out, like, properly. The hottest day of the year was in July, when temperatures reached a toasty 36.7C and, predictably, Londoners collectively lost their minds.
I'm inside a moving greenhouse on wheels. Or as it is also known 'a bus'. #hottestdayoftheyear
— Danny Palmer (@dannyjpalmer) July 1, 2015
#hottestdayoftheyear CAN YOU PLEASE END NOW
— &£$!^*() (@behlul_official) July 1, 2015
Why the fuck do I have a beard?! #hottestdayoftheyear
— Dominic Pollard (@DominicPollard) July 1, 2015
Most people spent the heatwave sweating profusely inside their poorly air conditioned offices, but for everyone else it was LIDO TIME. Shame they all had the same idea.
But like all good things, the heatwave eventually came to an to end. Just days after the hottest day of the year, London's skies erupted with a mega storm, which was no fun if you were caught outside without a brolly – but the pictures looked ace:
But then, just as we thought we'd seen the last of the sun for the next few months, the forecasters announced that an Indian summer was on its way (yay!). Except, it turns out weather forecasters lie and it never materialised (boo!).
Now, we hadn't forgotten about the disappointing solar eclipse but we couldn't help but get a little excited when we heard there was going to be a super blood moon – mainly because it doesn't sound like a real thing. But it is – it's when a supermoon and lunar eclipse happen at the same time. Super moons happen only when the moon is extremely close to Earth, and this was the first super blood moon in London for 30 years. But did it disappoint like the lacklustre solar eclipse? Actually, no. It looked pretty damn cool:
Lunar Eye-clipse https://t.co/LwDR5kxHqy #superbloodmoon #londoneye #london #supermoon #lunareclipse pic.twitter.com/NLB97gBxv5
— Andrew Steele (@statto) September 28, 2015
And you know what else looks cool? London in the fog. In November, the city was enveloped by fog and Londoners couldn't get enough of these eerie pics:
At the end of the year, London's weather came full circle, finishing off just as it started, with a poor attempt at snow. Don't remember it? You probably missed it because it lasted for all of about two minutes at around 6.30am on a Saturday when most people were sound asleep. Also, it looked suspiciously like rain:
Snow in London! #snow #London pic.twitter.com/0rdEnvC5wF
— Suswati Basu (巴苏) (@suswatibasu) November 21, 2015