According to a study by Uswitch.com, a British comparison website, the Estonian capital, Tallinn, has the most unpredictable weather among the capital cities of European countries.
The comparison website looked into the weather data of 35 European capital cities and ranked their weathers unpredictability based on six factors: cloud cover, frequency of frosty days, rain, temperature, frequency of wet days, and sunshine duration. Unpredictability was calculated based on the changes in each city’s weather data, the company said.
“Overall, Tallinn finishes with an unpredictability score of 69/100, making it the capital city with the most unpredictable weather in Europe,” Uswitch said in a statement.
“Tallinn’s most unpredictable weather phenomenon is its frequency of wet days, receiving an unpredictability score of 82% due to its proclivity for change.” When in Tallinn, the study says, one day you could be soaked from a sudden downpour, whereas other days it could be scorching hot.
Riga in Latvia follows closely with a score of 68. Set on the Baltic Sea, this capital city is very unpredictable in terms of precipitation, ranked at 69%.
Helsinki, Finland and Bern, Switzerland come in third and fourth with scores of 67 and 64 respectively. Both have high percentages for sunshine duration, showing that the amount of sun you can expect in these capital cities will alter drastically from day to day, according to Uswitch.
The capitals with the most unpredictable weather:
- Tallinn, Estonia
- Riga, Latvia
- Helsinki, Finland
- Bern, Switzerland
- Vaduz, Liechtenstein
- Sofia, Bulgaria
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Bratislava, Slovakia
9= Luxembourg, Luxembourg
9= Belgrade, Serbia
9= Skopje, North Macedonia
9= Budapest, Hungary
The capitals with the most predictable weather:
- Valletta, Malta
- Nicosia, Cyprus
- Dublin, Ireland
- London, the United Kingdom
- Rome, Italy
- Athens, Greece
- Reykjavik, Iceland
- Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Brussels, Belgium
- Paris, France
The company says it collected the data from multiple sources, including Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency; cmsaf.eu; and crudata.uea.ac.uk.
“The unpredictability score was created for all of each cities’ variables based on the weighted standard deviation of the data, meaning that the more variated or dispersed the data was, the higher the unpredictability score,” the company said.
“Each variable was then assigned a percentage out of 100 based on how unpredictable it was, and a total score out of 100 points was then created for each capital city ranking overall unpredictability of weather.”
Uswitch is a UK-based price comparison service and switching website founded in 2000. The site allows consumers to compare prices for a range of energy, personal finance, insurance and communications services.
