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11-06-2011, 10:16 AM
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Location: Vancouver, Canada
1,081 posts, read 378,402 times
Reputation: 590
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Unravel this mystery...
A bit of climate strangeness has been bothering me for some time.
Detroit averages 2,435.0 hours of sunlight.
Thunder Bay averages 2,168.0 of sunlight, and claims to be sunner than any Canadian city east of it.
So...
Either the climate becomes considerably cloudier south of the Detroit river, one of these two stations are wrong, or Windsor ( and I imagine some other parts of southern Ontario? ) are sunnier than Thunder Bay.
The problem is, there seems to be no reliable data on Windsor ( or for that matter, nearby Leamington and Chatham's ) sunshine hours.
Can anyone shed some light on this?
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11-06-2011, 10:21 AM
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Location: London
3,755 posts, read 1,897,650 times
Reputation: 1966
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That Detroit figure sounds suspiciously high for me given its reputation for gloomy winters.
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11-06-2011, 11:06 AM
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Location: Toronto
3,339 posts, read 1,594,623 times
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Here's an old sunshine hours map of Canada from the '50s.
The Atlas of Canada - Wind and Sunshine
From the map, it doesn't look like Thunder Bay (Fort William on the map) is exceptionally sunny, with 1800-2000 hours and parts of eastern Ontario are sunnier (2000 hours or more). Based on this (if this map was accurate at the time), it would go against that claim.
Only a bit of northwestern Ontario, eastern Ontario between Toronto and Ottawa, and if you look really closely around where Windsor is, it gets a bit sunnier over 2000 hours there too, so presumably so is Detroit (but by how much more?). |
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11-06-2011, 11:24 AM
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Location: Vancouver, BC
3,824 posts, read 1,923,074 times
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I think it's just a way for Thunder Bay to toot its own horn because it knows it can never compete with any climate east/south of it in Canada on a temperature basis...
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11-06-2011, 12:03 PM
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Location: New Jersey
8,713 posts, read 3,199,340 times
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Detroit must be just south enough to get a few hundred extra sunshine hours.
I live about 80 miles from Scranton, PA and about 150 miles from Binghamton, NY, yet I think my area average a good 100-300 hours more sunshine annually. That's a guesstimate though since I've never seen official sunshine figures for my area.
Transition zones have to start somewhere I guess.
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11-06-2011, 12:19 PM
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Location: London
3,755 posts, read 1,897,650 times
Reputation: 1966
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Detroit gets 53% of the possible according to this, whatever that equates to in raw numbers, 2300-2400 or so? Maybe the figure is right after all.
Sunshine- Average Percent (%) Possible |
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11-06-2011, 12:35 PM
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Location: Vancouver, Canada
1,081 posts, read 378,402 times
Reputation: 590
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90
Detroit must be just south enough to get a few hundred extra sunshine hours.
I live about 80 miles from Scranton, PA and about 150 miles from Binghamton, NY, yet I think my area average a good 100-300 hours more sunshine annually. That's a guesstimate though since I've never seen official sunshine figures for my area.
Transition zones have to start somewhere I guess.
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The thing that confuses me is that Windor, Ontario is actually south of Detroit, yet not far south enough to border Lake Erie ( and there for get strong lake effects like Buffalo or Rochester ).  |
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11-06-2011, 12:43 PM
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Location: New Jersey
8,713 posts, read 3,199,340 times
Reputation: 4081
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CairoCanadian
The thing that confuses me is that Windor, Ontario is actually south of Detroit, yet not far south enough to border Lake Erie ( and there for get strong lake effects like Buffalo or Rochester ). |
You're right. I was only looking at Thunderbay, not considering Windsor.
Maybe the US and Canada have different standards for recording sunshine? |
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11-06-2011, 01:17 PM
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Location: Wellington and North of South
3,429 posts, read 1,557,495 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90
You're right. I was only looking at Thunderbay, not considering Windsor.
Maybe the US and Canada have different standards for recording sunshine? |
They may well have. The Canada 1971-2000 normals are based on Campbell-Stokes recorders (glass sphere, marked cards). These are slowly being phased out in NZ, and that appears to be the case for the UK as well. If the US has not been using C-S methods, the means quoted are probably higher than they would be for C-S. |
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11-06-2011, 01:28 PM
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Location: Vancouver, Canada
1,081 posts, read 378,402 times
Reputation: 590
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RWood
They may well have. The Canada 1971-2000 normals are based on Campbell-Stokes recorders (glass sphere, marked cards). These are slowly being phased out in NZ, and that appears to be the case for the UK as well. If the US has not been using C-S methods, the means quoted are probably higher than they would be for C-S.
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This would answer a few questions I've had. For example, why Canada's Prairies seem to recieve 300-600 fewer hours than cities like Billings, Bismarck, and Fargo just to the south. I'd imagine a decrease of a hundred-odd due to the northerly location, but it seemed too big a jump for a few hundred kilometers of very flat terrain without maritime influences. |
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