Climate

Climate
*Highest maximum temperature: 35.2 °C (95.4 °F) at Hawarden Bridge, Flintshire on 2 August 1990.

*Lowest minimum temperature: −23.3 °C (−10 °F) at Rhayader, Radnorshire (now Powys) on 21 January 1940.[61]

*Maximum number of hours of sunshine in a month: 354.3 hours at Dale Fort, Pembrokeshire in July 1955.[62]

*Minimum number of hours of sunshine in a month: 2.7 hours atLlwynon, Brecknockshire in January 1962.[63]

*Maximum rainfall in a day (0900 UTC – 0900 UTC): 211 millimetres (8 in) at Rhondda, Glamorgan (now Rhondda Cynon Taf), on 11 November 1929.[64]

*Wettest spot – an average of 4,473 millimetres (176 in) rain a year at Crib Goch in Snowdonia, Gwynedd (making it also the wettest spot in the United Kingdom).[65][66]Languages
Main articles: Welsh language and English language


The Eisteddfod is an annual celebration of Welsh culture, conducted in Welsh.
The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages be treated on a basis of equality. However, even English has only de facto official status in the UK (see Languages of the United Kingdom)and this has led political groups like Plaid Cymru to question whether such legislation is sufficient to ensure the survival of the Welsh language.[78]
English is spoken by almost all people in Wales and is therefore the de facto main language (see Welsh English). However, northern and western Wales retain many areas where Welsh is spoken as a first language by the majority of the population andEnglish is learnt as a second language. 21.7% of the Welsh population is able to speak or read Welsh to some degree (based on the 2001 census), although only 16% claim to be able to speak, read and write it,[18] which may be related to the stark differences between colloquial and literary Welsh. According to a language survey conducted in 2004, a larger proportion than 21.7% claim to have someknowledge of the language.[79]
Today there are very few truly monoglot Welsh speakers, other than small children, but individuals still exist who may be considered less than fluent in English and rarely speak it. There were still many monoglots as recently as the middle of the 20th century.[80] Road signs in Wales are generally in both English and Welsh; where place names differ in the twolanguages, both versions are used (e.g. "Cardiff" and "Caerdydd"), the decision as to which is placed first being that of the local authority.
During the 20th century a number of small communities of speakers of languages other than English or Welsh, such as Bengali or Cantonese, have established themselves in Wales as a result of immigration. This phenomenon is almost exclusive to urban Wales. TheItalian Government funds the teaching of Italian to Welsh residents of Italian ancestry. These other languages do not have legal equality with English and Welsh, although public services may produce information leaflets in minority ethnic languages where there is a specific need, as happens elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Religion


St. David's Cathedral in Pembrokeshire.
The largest religion inWales is Christianity, with 72% of the population describing themselves as Christian in the 2001 census. The Presbyterian Church of Wales is the largest denomination and was born out of the Welsh Methodist revival in the 18th century and seceded from the Church of England in 1811. The Church in Wales is the next largest denomination, and forms part of the Anglican Communion. It too was part ofthe Church of England, and was disestablished by the British Government under the Welsh Church Act 1914 (the act did not take effect until 1920).
The Roman Catholic Church makes up the next largest denomination at 3% of the population. Non-Christian religions are small in Wales, making up approximately 1.5% of the population. 18% of people declare no religion. The Apostolic Church holds its...