How often is it windy?

Has anybody collected together weather stats so one can easily see how many days are light medium or windy sailing days?

Discussing the X1 with a few people, we seem to agree that at least in South England, inland waters perhaps 80% of the time the wind is light - although we probably remember the windier conditions more. So my real contention is that on inland waters is most sailing days are in light winds.  

What do you think? What percentage of sailing days (including those you don't even bother going out in) would you classify as light medium and heavy? Say where you are talking about - obviously places on the sea or with sea breezes would be windier.

Originally posted by SoggyBadger I'd imagine the Met Office has those sorts of stats.

Do you know how to access them?

I read somewhere - may even have been on the Met Office site (somewhere!) - that the average windspeed in UK is 10mph (or was it knots?).

Alright, here is a map:

Most of the Met Office data - from which all the various sources listed above are derived - are data collected at 10m and are average daily/monthly data.  Apart from being able to (possibly) spot areas that are windier than others - these are not much value for analysing sailing conditions for lots of reasons

Edited by marke - 10 Mar 12 at 2:46pm