These days we don’t just talk about the weather; we tweet about it too. Recently British Gas analysed a quarter of a million UK weather tweets, and the results suggest that people’s feelings about the weather might depend on where they live.

Despite being blessed with more than average amounts of sunshine, people living in Surrey and Hampshire have a tendency to moan, with nearly half of their weather-related tweets being negative. Meanwhile, in Essex – one of Britain’s driest counties – residents take to Twitter at the first sign of rain, with nearly one third of their weather tweets mentioning rain.

Yorkshire folk are generally cheery about their weather, with more than two-thirds of the county’s weather-related tweets being of a positive nature. Curiously, people in some of the snowiest parts of the country are the most stoic when it comes to snow. Residents of Roxburghshire in the Scottish Borders mention snow in 6% of their tweets. The national average is 11%.

The variation in types of weather tweets is probably largely explained by climatic differences between counties. “Given the way the human brain is wired we respond more strongly to negative and novel events,” says Vinita Mehta, a clinical psychologist in Washington DC. So, for example, a drop of rain is considered unusual and worth talking about in Essex, but normal in Cumbria.

However, tweets may not be all that representative of British feelings about the weather. “Demography might be playing a role, with younger folks more likely to broadcast their sentiments on Twitter,” says Mehta. Nonetheless, it can be fun to speculate exactly where the weather whingers live.