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I understand that people in South Texas may not have any warm clothes because they rarely need them, but at 63F for a January in Houston, I can walk around with a plain T-shirt and shorts. Therefore, it is not excusable for anyone to use words like subartic and bitterly cold to describe Houston.
Many words don't have precise definitions and their meanings can vary from person to person. Still, they usually fall within certain bounds so that when you use them in conversation, people know what you are talking about. When you go beyond those bounds, words start to lose their meaning. For example if say that, IN MY OPINION, 90F is cold or 40F is hot, or that a watermelon is salty while a pretzel is sour, that "Schindler's List" was funny and Will Farrell movies are sad, you can see things getting very ridiculous. Furthermore, if everyone started defining words to mean almost anything that they wished them to mean, describing everyday things, such as how your dinner was last night, would be nearly impossible. It would be a mockery of the English language.
I've never thought of the US as a particularly sunny country, except for the Southwest. I wonder if the sunshine data is measured the same in each country so that comparisons are fair. I certainly don't think of the East Coast as sunny compared to say Australia. I mean Bill Bryson wrote a book about Australia called "A Sunburnt Country". The US is not really thought of as very sunny overall I thought. Maybe the data here, which by the way last time I checked was all collected between 1960 and 1990, is not as accurate as the rest of the world where it seems sunshine hours are measured daily. You'll never see sunshine hours on any NOAA websites except for that old data.
When Houston gets 6+ months of snow cover, and temps down to -55F every winter, then come talk to me. Until then, you calling Houston sub-arctic is just as ridiculous as me calling Fairbanks sub-tropical.
Even in the summer, when Fairbanks high temperatures can reach into the 70s and 80s (and at times 90s), the "nighttime" (never gets fully dark in Fairbanks in the summer) lows are still too low to be classified as "sub-tropical," just as having a daytime high of 60 degrees in Houston in the winter is way too high to call it "sub-arctic." Just MY opinion!
Also in my opinion, we hit 77 degrees here today, and it was HOT! Was really wishing I had a lake to cool off in, instead of being stuck at work and in my hot, mandatory work clothes. lol
I've never thought of the US as a particularly sunny country, except for the Southwest. I wonder if the sunshine data is measured the same in each country so that comparisons are fair. I certainly don't think of the East Coast as sunny compared to say Australia. I mean Bill Bryson wrote a book about Australia called "A Sunburnt Country". The US is not really thought of as very sunny overall I thought. Maybe the data here, which by the way last time I checked was all collected between 1960 and 1990, is not as accurate as the rest of the world where it seems sunshine hours are measured daily. You'll never see sunshine hours on any NOAA websites except for that old data.
I averaged the totaLs for a lengthy list of US sites with a good geographic spread, came up with a national average of about 60% of the possible (perhaps a bit higher). Better than the world average, but you must remember Australia is mostly "outback" - most of the population lives on the somewhat cloudier fringes. The 70% of possible isohel encompasses the vast majority of Australia, so it's sunnier overall than the US.
I also learned that people get very heated over weather and fight about it! You shouldnt fight, i think this is a forum full of amazing people that know a lot about weather! We are all awesome/crazy/nerdy for caring about weather so much and shouldnt be fighting, just learning and sharing thoughts and our awesomeness
I averaged the totaLs for a lengthy list of US sites with a good geographic spread, came up with a national average of about 60% of the possible (perhaps a bit higher). Better than the world average, but you must remember Australia is mostly "outback" - most of the population lives on the somewhat cloudier fringes. The 70% of possible isohel encompasses the vast majority of Australia, so it's sunnier overall than the US.
That’s a good point, and one we should remember when we look at sunshine hours worldwide…where are the cities/stations located. It seems there is a dearth of weather stations in the most remote climates on earth.
While I think a city like Yuma is certainly intensely sunny with 4000 hrs (+/-) annually…there has to be other locations in the BWh Climates (Tropical - Subtropical Desert) with as much (or more) hrs of sunshine – but there is no station/observer around to record data. I would guess (?) that the Sahara Desert, the Kalahari, the Atacama-Peruvian, parts of interior Australia,etc have higher (maybe much higher) sunshine hrs than places like Yuma or Palm Springs. We need more stations in the remote locations to really fill in the holes.
One other interesting note:
I don’t know how up you are on “Global Dimming” (I know little/nothing myself), but keep in mind that in some regions of the earth (mostly Western countries) – the air is much cleaner with less suspended particles than it was 30 years ago (in the 60’s and 70’s) due to the environmental movement. For example, here in the USA, while the air is far from clean around LA , suspended matter/pollution is much lower than it was in the 1970’s. So it seems likely that today there could be more hrs of sunshine (and of higher intensity) reaching the surface in many areas of Europe/USA/Australia…than there was 30 years ago when many Western countries had yet to develop/enforce clear air acts. I don't know how bad pollution was in Australia was back in the 1970's (when the environmental movement started) but many areas of Australia might have less suspened matter today than 30 years ago, so there hrs/intensity of sunshine might be higher today.
I understand that people in South Texas may not have any warm clothes because they rarely need them, but at 63F for a January in Houston, I can walk around with a plain T-shirt and shorts. Therefore, it is not excusable for anyone to use words like subartic and bitterly cold to describe Houston.
YOU CAN but other people can't. Is it that hard to understand that different people have different comfort levels?
Not hard to understand at all, many of us have been talking about these points for years. However, it is still a major generalization to go on about Houston in the "winter"!
We haven't seen sunshine in TR for many days, this a.m. so foggy I can't see across the street! I don't like damp at all, but I don't rant and rave every day about TR having cloudy, overcast, cold weather all summer long.
It has been pointed out that I do whine sometimes, I took that comment instride did not bicker back and forth about it. Many of us have our favorite weather, I love sunshine, 70's/low 80's for summer.
Right now, not happening, do I mention it every day, beating the subject to death? Last summer was unusually warm, hot and humid (for here), I didn't care for it but do not characterize TR's summer as awful, hot and humid. It was one summer and an exception.
Houston's weather this past winter was not what happens every winter for 3 months straight (NOAA's defininition of winter)! Talking about Houston with exagerated terms in every single post, gets very old. I could come on here like SAB, go on about our 5 days of fog but so what? I look forward to the pattern breaking and in a few days, we'll have 5 days of sunshine!
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The US is not really thought of as very sunny overall I thought. Maybe the data here, which by the way last time I checked was all collected between 1960 and 1990, is not as accurate as the rest of the world where it seems sunshine hours are measured daily. You'll never see sunshine hours on any NOAA websites except for that old data.
! You shouldnt fight, i think this is a forum full of amazing people that know a lot about weather! We are all awesome/crazy/nerdy
for caring about weather so much and shouldnt be fighting, just learning and sharing thoughts and our awesomeness
I don't like damp at all, but I don't rant and rave every day about TR having cloudy, overcast, cold weather all summer long. 
