I am tired of hearing how great Pittsburgh is! (Denver: tech job, salaries)

[tread102]

Originally Posted by Gnutella

Just so we have the facts, here's some Pittsburgh weather data through the first five months of 2013...


January 2013

Clear days: 1
Partly cloudy days: 13
Cloudy days: 17

Total clear and partly cloudy days: 14 out of 31 (45.2%)

Days with temperatures 60°+: 4
Days with temperatures 70°+: 0
Days with temperatures 80°+: 0

Maximum temperature: 68°


February 2013

Clear days: 0
Partly cloudy days: 10
Cloudy days: 18

Total clear and partly cloudy days: 10 out of 28 (35.7%)

Days with temperatures 60°+: 1
Days with temperatures 70°+: 0
Days with temperatures 80°+: 0

Maximum temperature: 60°


March 2013

Clear days: 2
Partly cloudy days: 10
Cloudy days: 19

Total clear and partly cloudy days: 12 out of 31 (38.7%)

Days with temperatures 60°+: 2
Days with temperatures 70°+: 1
Days with temperatures 80°+: 0

Maximum temperature: 71°


April 2013

Clear days: 0
Partly cloudy days: 21
Cloudy days: 9

Total clear and partly cloudy days: 21 out of 30 (70.0%)

Days with temperatures 60°+: 20
Days with temperatures 70°+: 11
Days with temperatures 80°+: 3

Maximum temperature: 85°


May 2013

Clear days: 1
Partly cloudy days: 26
Cloudy days: 4

Total clear and partly cloudy days: 27 out of 31 (87.1%)

Days with temperatures 60°+: 28
Days with temperatures 70°+: 23
Days with temperatures 80°+: 10

Maximum temperature: 87°


January-May 2013

Clear: 4
Partly cloudy: 80
Cloudy: 67

Total clear and partly cloudy days: 84 out of 151 (55.6%)

Days with temperatures 60°+: 55
Days with temperatures 70°+: 35
Days with temperatures 80°+: 13

Maximum temperature: 87°

Thanks for helping with my argument. 9 clear days in 5 months thats a great average. Here is a great link for you.
Annual Days of Sunshine in Pennsylvania - Current Results

45 percent sunshine in pittsburgh that means its cloudy 55 percent of the time, and most of that 45 percent is from mid may to mid sept. Like I said you can make a lot of great arguments for the burgh. Weather however isn't one of them.

[tread102]

Originally Posted by gortonator

Nice post

Here's another pic of those terrible, dark winter days.



The photos metadata says it was taken on Feb 17th 2013. My camera must be lying!!!

There's always exceptions to the rule, but you can expect lots of clouds between Oct and April. Very few cloudless days, and yes there are tons of cloudless days in other parts of the country. That's what my wife and I love about Charlotte. When its the coldest, its almost always sunny. My parents have recently bought a retirement home down here in charlotte, and now when its sunny back home she comments we have a Carolina sky. It happens about once or twice a month. I talk to her daily. They also live 40 miles south of the city, even further away from that big old cloud machine lake erie.

[pghdude28]

Originally Posted by tread102

Thanks for helping with my argument. 9 clear days in 5 months thats a great average. Here is a great link for you.
Annual Days of Sunshine in Pennsylvania - Current Results

45 percent sunshine in pittsburgh that means its cloudy 55 percent of the time, and most of that 45 percent is from mid may to mid sept. Like I said you can make a lot of great arguments for the burgh. Weather however isn't one of them.

I think the % of possible sun is the best to use. Yeah we've had a lot of "partly cloudy" days since March, but a lot of those seemed to lean more cloudy than sunny. Take today for example. Total cloud-cover til 2 or 3 p.m. and now its pretty sunny out. Today will probably be considered "partly cloudy" even though we had overcast for several hours. Last year was the opposite, which seemed we had more sun on our partly cloudy days than this year and a lot more clear days.

Bottom line -- May through September are pretty good sunshine-wise here. Probably a good place for a southerner to escape the Florida heat and humidity for a nice comfortable, warm summer up here. But the remaining 6-7 months are nothing but gray, gray, gray. Day in and day out.

[tread102]

Cloudiest Cities in US - Current Results

last one. pretty damning for the pittsburgh has great weather crowd.

[pghdude28]

Originally Posted by tread102

Cloudiest Cities in US - Current Results

last one. pretty damning for the pittsburgh has great weather crowd.

I think we do worse with average hours of sun than just cloudy days. 45% puts us below Seattle. I wonder how much of that could be pollution-related? Lots of haze or sun shining through heavy overcast.

[fleetiebelle]

God, does it really matter the exact percentages of sunlight vs. cloudiness that we have to have a pissing contest about it every time it comes up? If you you want constant sunshine, move to Phoenix. I can't say that Pittsburgh's weather has ever really factored much into my opinion of the city. I think today has been a nice day weatherwise, but I don't have a light meter or SAD, so there's that.

[Geeo]

Agreed. Does it really matter? If someone has to ball up in a fetal position because there's a cloud in the sky, there's nowhere to go. (Florida and Hawaii have daily clouds during the rainy and hurricane season). Maybe San Diego, but it's a desert. And Phoenix has those lovely Dust Bowl storms.

[greg42]

Originally Posted by tread102

pretty damning for the pittsburgh has great weather crowd.

Who the hell ever says it has great weather? I don't think I've seen that. I think I've seen some people including myself suggest that the people saying there are 5, 6, 7, 9, whatever months of no sunshine are being ridiculous. That's it.

It's the same damn argument every time....

Nobody's trying to say there are 300 clear days or something. Geez. But a day like today is a perfectly useful day. It was dry, not hot, and now the sun is out. If this kind of day depresses you greatly you should probably live somewhere else. But this kind of day is a perfect example of why this BS about "You don't see the sun for 6 months" or whatever flies in the face of reality.

Must be a half full/half empty thing, I don't know. Or maybe everyone who says that spends most of their daylight hours in rooms without much access to windows, so during the small amount of daylight in the winter it is more likely for them to see only clouds on the rare occasions they glimpse the outside world. Hey, it's just as plausible as anything else. All I know is I've watched it for almost 22 years. I'd put money on there being more sunshine recently than a decade or so ago, including through winter. I do not have personal written weather observations but wish I did when I see some of these statements. For that matter, if I go back far enough there was a decent chunk of time where I myself spent a lot of those daylight hours without much access to windows/outside, so maybe that clouds (hehehe) my past vs present observation.

Those charts/lists don't tell you the whole story unless you know how each day is calculated. Like today. With so much of the early day as overcast (remember starting at midnight) it seems likely to me it will go in the books as cloudy. And yet right now it is pretty clear with bright sun. Daylight vs dark also affects the perception but not the calculation. If the clear part of the day happens mainly at night, it'll seem bogus for it to be "partly cloudy", but 29% of a day being clear (if indeed that figures into the calculation) is over 6 hours of clear and could still be marked "cloudy" (over 70%). If those 6 hours happen during the day, especially in winter, that will seem like a pretty decent day even if it gets to be marked "cloudy".

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by fleetiebelle

God, does it really matter the exact percentages of sunlight vs. cloudiness that we have to have a pissing contest about it every time it comes up? If you you want constant sunshine, move to Phoenix. I can't say that Pittsburgh's weather has ever really factored much into my opinion of the city. I think today has been a nice day weatherwise, but I don't have a light meter or SAD, so there's that.

No, it doesn't matter what the percentages are. Some people could not care less. Others are really bothered by cloudy weather. I've known people who moved to Seattle and couldn't stand it, literally; had to leave to keep their sanity. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area. When I moved to Champaign, IL, I thought it was extremely sunny there. DH went to Champaign from Pasadena, CA. He thought it was cloudy. It's a matter of perspective.

My beef when this comes up (and I've learned not to get *too* involved in these threads b/c they always turn out badly) is that some people try to say that Pittsburgh is not a cloudy city near the bottom of the sunshine list. Those pictures posted in the last couple days are a perfect example. Are we supposed to believe that these pictures show what Pittsburgh's skies look like almost every day of the year? Apparently. And I have some beach front property in Nebraska to sell to the highest bidder.

[fleetiebelle]

Originally Posted by Katiana

My beef when this comes up (and I've learned not to get *too* involved in these threads b/c they always turn out badly) is that some people try to say that Pittsburgh is not a cloudy city near the bottom of the sunshine list. Those pictures posted in the last couple days are a perfect example. Are we supposed to believe that these pictures show what Pittsburgh's skies look like almost every day of the year? Apparently. And I have some beach front property in Nebraska to sell to the highest bidder.

Right, but like Greg was trying to say above, when people say here, "the weather in Pittsburgh isn't that bad," they don't mean, "It's just like Florida!" No one said that. So it's cloudy. Big deal. If it mattered that much no one would live in Seattle or London.