Annual Sunshine Hours Per City

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It's another sunny day here in Berlin. So far, this feels like the sunniest place I've lived, except maybe New York. It's extraordinary how much sunnier it is than Paris or London, and how much better that makes you feel about life.

Hey, I wonder if there are stats online about the average amount of sunshine each city gets? Is Berlin really sunnier?

Aha! The Sunshine Hours Page ranks places from the sunniest at the top (4300 hours of sunshine annually for the lucky Eastern Sahara desert) to the most gloomy and cloud-covered at the bottom (a mere 970 sun-hours for gloomy Manchester, England -- based on stats from 1960, when it was more polluted). The cloudiest place on Earth is The Doldrums, an area of the Pacific between Hawaii and Tahiti.

My dizzy hike from one world city to another has, interestingly, seen me scale the sunshine table from the Doldrums towards the Goldens:

Edinburgh: 1351
Even darker and gloomier than Glasgow!

London: 1494
Not much better. I remember the 80s as one rainy day after another.

Paris: 1700
Marginally better.

New York: 2685
Astronomically sunny! And it really felt like it. Sunshine on yellow taxis! That metallic, super-realistic light casting highlights off silver buildings!

Tokyo: 1965
More sun than any of the European cities. A lot of rain concentrated in early summer, though. Oceanic 'rainy season'.

Berlin: 1837
Certainly the sunniest place I've lived in Northern Europe. And having an unusually sunny year, I suspect. Haven't weathered the winter here yet -- I hear it can be brutally cold.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 6 June 2003 08:01 (twenty-two years ago)

How do sunshine and cloud affect your general sense of well-being, if at all?

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 6 June 2003 08:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I always thought Glasgow was cloudier than Edinburgh. I think of Edinburgh as cloudless and cold. Though I got totally drenched there last year so I don't know why I think this. But west coast = wetter / east coast = colder is a pretty widely held belief, isn't it?

Why on earth are they basing their stats on data from 1960?

I love clear skies. We have them in Glasgow this morning.

― N. (nickdastoor), Friday, 6 June 2003 08:11 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought that the west coast was wetter and cloudier too, but this table says Glasgow gets 1400 annual sun hours to Edinbrugh's 1351. There's a spot in East Lothian which is a sun trap, though. It's near Haddington, I believe. The clouds just open in a little circle above it then close again.

The only 1960 stat is the Manchester one. They just added it to show that pollution has a big effect on sun hours.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 6 June 2003 08:29 (twenty-two years ago)

1. Sahara Desert
2. Yuma, Arizona

Haha.

― gazuga (gazuga), Friday, 6 June 2003 11:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't much like the sunshine, personally. It makes me squint and sweat and burn.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 6 June 2003 12:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Sun and rain both please me, if in different ways. Weather that’s merely overcast is deathly dull in its wishy-washiness (though an overcast sky can have a kind of grandeur at night, when the light of buildings reflect off the clouds). At least rain is affirmative.

Temperature and hours of daylight/hours of darkness are much bigger factors in determining my mood.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 6 June 2003 12:18 (twenty-two years ago)

wow. recognize how hard it was for me to keep my ghostly pallor as an AZ goth.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 6 June 2003 12:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm, thread's a bit slow. If you like, we could add permission to talk about anal sunshine hours per city. How many hours does the sun shine out of the ass of the average Angelino, for instance?

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 6 June 2003 13:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I really dont know the answer to this one... the last three times I have been to Europe, I have gone in winter, and the dreariness is definitely part of my experience of Europe and therefore my romanticization of it... I expecially liked the sort of glowing haze of london in february... i think overcast days can sometimes result in really strange ambiences... in general, its hard not to associate weather with all sorts of personal and sociocultural knowledge, and sometimes it jsut depends on my mood.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Friday, 6 June 2003 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

It's easier to express the sunshine hours as a percentage (of 4380, half of all the hours in a year). So you get this:
Edinburg - 30.1%
Cork - 31.7%
London - 34.1%
Paris - 38.8%
Chicago - 60.1%
New York - 61.3%
San Antonio - 62.1%
Los Angeles - 77.1%

Et cetera.

― Hank Tenbeer (kenan), Friday, 6 June 2003 13:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Sunlight/cloudlessness has a profound effect on my outlook & motivation. Sunny days, I'm a rip-roarin' smilin' rowdy ready-to-play summer-warrior. Rainy/cloudy days, I become a coffee-drinking frowny-faced sleepy sulking mess. I want to say the change has something to do with vitamin B-12, but it's probably psychosomatic (imagine that? < /sarcasm>).

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 6 June 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Temperature and hours of daylight/hours of darkness are much bigger factors in determining my mood.

I hear you there, m'friend.

How many hours does the sun shine out of the ass of the average Angelino, for instance?

Let me get back to you on that.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 June 2003 14:13 (twenty-two years ago)

(Ned dons goggles, climbing gear, torch.)

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 6 June 2003 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)

It's a dirty job, sir. Anyway, have you taken up Mr. JOhn Mountain Goats' musical challenge to you on that other thread? ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 June 2003 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

If it's sunny for too long I get miserable.

If it rains all the time, I get used to it.

Ideally, the weather should change every couple of days.

― jel -- (jel), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I see Denver is not on this list. It is one of the sunniest cities in the USA, having over 300 sunny days a year. Plus, it doesn't get too hot. Yay Denver.

― Mandee, Friday, 6 June 2003 16:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Seattle's at 46%...

But hey, we beat TOKYO! (which is around 45%).. and almost all of Canada, the UK, and Ireland.

― donut bitch (donut), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

(I think we've exhausted our 46% in the last two weeks, however.. goddamn)

― donut bitch (donut), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

this is bullshit.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:48 (twenty-two years ago)

55.3% here in Winnipeg. Just about right as far as I'm concerned!

― Bryan (Bryan), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't remember Berlin winters as having been particularly brutal(relative to Washington, DC).

Seattle had sun recently? That explains everything! For the last 3 weeks DC was solidly overcast, drizzly, and unseasonably cool. What the hell were you doing with our spring?

― j.lu (j.lu), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:54 (twenty-two years ago)

The figures for Detroit seem way off...it has nowhere near as many sunny days as is being claimed.

― Nicole (Nicole), Friday, 6 June 2003 16:57 (twenty-two years ago)

What nickalicious said.

But also, the sun can make me sleepy, just like everything else does.

New York might be sunny, but it's got all those super-tall buildings to shade you.

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Friday, 6 June 2003 18:18 (twenty-two years ago)

The sunshine bores the daylights out of me. (Unless it's cool and crisp.) I need to move to Vancouver, although DC has been OTM for the last month. Any moment now it's gonna be 97 (that's like what, 36 for you metrics?) and the air will be made of water and I will be eating fuc.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, 6 June 2003 18:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Sure, the weather affects me. It sets the tone for the day, in a similar way as a dream does, ie you don't even need to be consciously aware of it for it to affect you. You can see the way it affects a whole region via such things as the music and art that people living there produce. Of course, it's is hard to entangle weather's role from all the other factors that influence such things.
Useless fact of the day: St. Petersburg, Florida had 768 days of consecutive sunshine.

― oops (Oops), Friday, 6 June 2003 19:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Stuff the sunshine! It causes skin cancer!

(I am not a goth.)

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Friday, 6 June 2003 19:40 (twenty-two years ago)

The sun annoys me. It hurts my eyes, it causes my skin color to darken, it gives off intensive heat, it makes everything on the outside have this really bright sparkle to it, it turns the green plants outside brown, it dries up everything, it makes the pavement scorching hot to the touch, and it leads to drought, skin cancer, and other not-nice things.

Ooh, but lucky me, I live in a place with 2,721 bloomin' hours of sunshine per year, even taking into consideration the fact that every May we experience weeks of cloudiness as a result of the controlled field fires Mexican farmers set each year. Oh lucky, lucky, lucky me. Help.

― Dee the Lurker (Dee the Lurker), Friday, 6 June 2003 20:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Pasadena is sunnier than LA, so we're probably over 3400 hrs. I don't mind lots of sun but I hate it when it's warm in the morning (8-9 AM). And it's "Angeleno," BTW.

― nickn (nickn), Friday, 6 June 2003 22:43 (twenty-two years ago)

How many hours does the sun shine out of the ass of the average Angelino, for instance?

"Yellow is the color of sunrays"

Not anymore.

(I can't believe I couldn't restrain myself from posting that)

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 6 June 2003 22:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I hate the sun. Especially these last few days.

Once my boss and I left the office -- this was about a month ago on one of the first sunny Portland days -- and she was admiring how the landscaping was doing until she noticed that I was literally bent over and shielding my eyes from the late-afternoon sun.

Stupid sun.

― Chris P (Chris P), Friday, 6 June 2003 22:51 (twenty-two years ago)

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