What do you look for when buying a house in the country? The community? Schools? Access to work? The lie of the landscape, the aspect and – given the disasters of summer – the nearest riverbank? Few of us consider one of the most fundamental aspects: the weather.

Did you know that it rains four times as much in Llanrwst, Snowdonia, as in Sheringham, Norfolk? Or that Paignton, in Devon, is twice as sunny as Bradford, in Yorkshire? Inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides put up with 35 days of gales a year on average – no wonder they are famed for their warm tweeds and winter woollies – whereas the people of Gloucestershire experience fewer than five.

These may be extremes, but they illustrate just how much the weather varies, despite the small size of these islands – and how significant a factor it ought to be in deciding where to live.

Because the prevailing wind comes from the west or southwest, this is where most of the weather comes from, and where it is wettest. Damp air arrives from the Atlantic, is forced up over the first high ground it meets – in Wales, the Lake District or the western Highlands of Scotland – condenses, then falls. Accordingly, the eastern half of Britain is drier and, generally, colder. The further north you go, the windier and stormier it becomes – a weather front of the magnitude of the great storm of 1987, which damaged one in six insured households, can be expected in the south every 200 or so years. In the Orkneys and Shetlands, however, winds of this strength blow every 30-40 years, which helps to explain why there are so few trees.

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Then there is the Gulf Stream. The warm Atlantic Ocean current affects the climate of western Britain profoundly, and makes Cornwall, the Isle of Man and parts of western Scotland largely frost-free. As a result, these are areas where subtropical plants and even palms thrive.

There is also plenty of variation within regions. Considering buying a Scottish holiday hideaway? Braemar, in Scotland, is consistently the coldest place in Britain, while Tomintoul, just north of the Cairngorm massif, has the most days of snow. Dedicated frost-lovers in lowland areas should head for “frost hollows,” lowlying areas where cold air pools. The best-known examples (and gardeners, in particular, should note this, as more tender plants will suffer) are Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire, Houghall, in Co Durham, and Santon Downham, in Suffolk.

The Scilly Isles are consistently the warmest place in Britain, though house-hunters seeking winter warmth should head for north Wales. There were just eight days in January, in the entire 20th century, when temperatures in Britain reached 17C, and seven of them occurred between Bangor and Llandudno. This is thanks to the mountain wind that creates unseasonal warmth on lowlands in the lee of hills. Humidity is an altogether different sort of heat, and, in July and August, it turns Fort William, in Scotland, into the midge capital of Britain.

Weymouth, in Dorset, is the sunniest place in Britain, while the coastal strip from Margate to Portsmouth can expect more than eight hours of sunshine a day in an average June. The notion of an English Riviera was first popularised by George III in the late 18th century. It was promoted enthusiastically by the Edwardian railway companies, which managed to extend the idea of this climatic zone to Cornwall.

Keen fell walkers looking for a Lake District bolt hole should beware the wettest inhabited place in England: the hamlet of Seathwaite, Cumbria. Blaenau Ffestiniog and Fort William take the crown for Wales and Scotland respectively. The driest place, with an average of just 513mm of rain a year, is St Osyth, five miles west of Clacton-on-Sea, in Essex – dry enough, by some definitions, to qualify as a desert region. The myth of Manchester being our wettest city is just that – a myth. Penzance, Plymouth and Swansea are all wetter.

In lowland areas, exposed Atlantic headlands are windiest, which means most of Cornwall and the Western Isles of Scotland, the Orkneys and the Shetlands. Coastal areas are also subject to sea breezes in the daytime and land breezes by night during the warmer half of the year. Inland, the sites of former windmills will be exposed (or “well winded”, as an estate agent might put it).

The east side of the Lake District has Britain’s only named wind, the Helm, a howling easterly that roars down off the top (or “helm”) of Cross Fell, in the Pennines at up to 90mph, sometimes for days at a time. It affects only about 10 villages, but can be so maddening that agents say it has an adverse impact on property prices. If you like wind – if you are a paraglider, or passionate about flying kites – a home in the Black Mountains of south Wales would be ideal.

Buy a house that sits higher than 1,000ft and you may spend weeks of the year immersed in a foggy gloom – although you may also experience occasions when a temperature inversion fills the valleys below with cloud, leaving you smugly above it all in a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk landscape. Dartmoor hosts our best-known fogs, but the Vale of York is also reliably murky. For sea fogs, the east coast of Scotland is the place: up the Spey valley, the first creeping tendrils of haars, as they are known locally, often appear in late afternoon.

Finally, anyone scared of lightning should steer clear of Thunderstorm Alley, a belt stretching from Thetford to Stoke-on-Trent. They should choose Newcastle or north Scotland instead, where thunderstorms are scarcest.

Bizarrely, for all the diversity of the British weather – and its prominence in our conversation – no accessible, popular guide to its regional characteristics is available. Nor do estate agents exploit it as much as they might. The Met Office can supply a mass of minutely detailed data, but, unless you are a professional meteorologist, you are probably better off asking a local farmer about conditions before buying.

So what is the best buy for the dedicated weather-watcher, someone who wants to experience the full force of the spectrum of British weather from the comfort of their own home? Snap up a remote property high up on a hillside, facing west. Even better, buy a lighthouse.

The Wrong Kind of Snow: The Complete Daily Companion to the British Weather by Antony Woodward and Robert Penn (Hodder & Stoughton £14.99) is available for the special price of £13.49, including p&p, through The Sunday Times BooksFirst; 0870 165 8585, timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

What it’s like where you are

Sunniest Weymouth, Dorset

Wettest Seathwaite, Cumbria

Driest St Osyth, Essex

Warmest Scilly Isles

Coldest Braemar, Scotland

Stormiest Thetford to Stoke-on-Trent

Windiest Cornwall/west coast

Foggiest Dartmoor, Devon

Most snow Tomintoul, Scotland

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