Sunny Days in Pittsburgh: 145 (Not 59) (California, Dublin: neighborhood, estimate, farmers)

[gortonator]

Originally Posted by pghdude28

Facts are facts and all you have to do is a google search and find that Pittsburgh has the lowest hours of annual sunshine of just about every single major metro in the U.S. Stats have Portland, OR ranking higher. Sorry to **** on your parade... Facts are facts. There is even evidence Seattle has more clear days than Pgh (71 vs. 59). Summer is the only exception here (although this year isn't great). The rest of the year is heavy duty cloud cover blocking the direct sun. Whether you like it or not is subjective. But to lie and say Seattle is worse goes against facts aka stats!

depends on your source ... check out:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Climate, Average Weather, Temperatures, Rainfall, Sunshine, Humidity, Graphs, July/ August and Seattle, Washington Climate, Average Weather, Temperatures, Rainfall, Sunshine, Humidity, Graphs, July/ August

2378 (Pgh) versus 2044 (Sea). That would certainly agree with my experiences of both places so far. Same site has Portland at 1953 hours. Again, not unreasonable based on my time there watching rain fall.

You ever been to Pacific Northwest, pghdude? Is that where you're planning to move to? It's a great place ...

[MathmanMathman]

I guess we can go on and on about the facts and the stats but I offer some more

City Days of Heavy Cloud % of Days
Seattle, Washington 226 62
Portland, Oregon 222 61
Buffalo, New York 208 57
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 203 56
Cleveland, Ohio 202 55
Rochester, New York 200 55
Columbus, Ohio 190 52
Cincinnati, Ohio 186 51
Detroit, Michigan 185 51

Cloudiest Cities in US - Current Results

[gortonator]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

I guess we can go on and on about the facts and the stats but I offer some more

City Days of Heavy Cloud % of Days
Seattle, Washington 226 62
Portland, Oregon 222 61
Buffalo, New York 208 57
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 203 56
Cleveland, Ohio 202 55
Rochester, New York 200 55
Columbus, Ohio 190 52
Cincinnati, Ohio 186 51
Detroit, Michigan 185 51

Cloudiest Cities in US - Current Results

All good. Problem as far as I can tell is that very few if any sites cite (sic) the sources of their data. Number of years taken into consideration will also be an important factor. So all figures need to be taken as indicative, not gospel.

For international comparison, Melbourne Australia has approx 2200 hours of sunshine each year. It's a city known for its volatile climate and grey winters, but few would consider it terrible. Sydney (my home town) has approx 2400 sunshine hours annually - its a weather-active, regularly cloudy place. Many of those sunshine hours are in winter. No one would consider Sydney a bad climate, not even pghdude

Both obviously are a lot warmer than Pgh in winter, but not much hotter in summer.

[reddesertfox]

Originally Posted by pghdude28

Good thing I wasn't at Seven Springs today! Lots of sunshine and clearing skies here in Pittsburgh. I love snow, don't mind the cold... but hate hate endless overcast day after day. There's plenty of locales with 4 seasons that receives a lot more sunshine than here in the winter. It's just too damn grey. I deal with it. There's more pros than cons of living here for me, but a major con for me would be the perpetual greyness of winter. All subjective though.

Agreed,but all four seasons in Pittsburgh are gray.

[reddesertfox]

Originally Posted by Tiger Beer

Found this chart:

Cloudiest American Cities in Winter - Current Results

City Winter Days of Heavy Cloud % of Days
Portland, Oregon 71 79
Seattle, Washington 70 78
Buffalo, New York 68 76
Cleveland, Ohio 68 76
Rochester, New York 64 71
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 64 71
Columbus, Ohio 60 67
Detroit, Michigan 59 66
Cincinnati, Ohio 57 63
Indianapolis, Indiana 55 61
Louisville, Kentucky 55 61
Chicago, Illinois 53 59
Salt Lake City, Utah 53 59
Houston, Texas 52 58
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 52 58
Nashville, Tennessee 50 56


THe first number is the 'Winter Days of Heavy Clouds' and the second number is the "% of Days"

Pittsburgh seems pretty typical of the region. Looks like Buffalo and Cleveland is much worse. Portland and Seattle not surprisingly is the worse.

I was originally curious to look this up, as I grew up north of Detroit, and for some reason, remember a lot of sunny winter days driving in the car. But, looking at the stats, I must have only experienced that 33% of the Winter days. So, apparently, cloudy winter days isn't something that effects me much at all.

I am a retired climatologist and Pittsburgh is cloudier than London or Dublin.

[lurtsman]

Glad to see this thread shifted from it's original measures of "sunny days", which turned about to be a very poorly designed metric because the break points were so arbitrary, to a measure of "average sunshine hours". Using sunshine hours tells us vastly more about how much sunshine an area is receiving, and what months that sunshine comes in. Some places will combine the total sunshine hours with the percent of possible sunshine hours.

Personally, I'm fond of Pittsburgh, but don't live there. I grew up in Portland, OR, which has a fairly similar level of clouds, and my wife and I both found we were depressed during the winters.

Rather than compare Pittsburgh to polar opposite places like Yuma, lets compare sunshine to other cities people might know.
Pittsburgh gets roughly 2000 to 2100 hours of sunshine per year.
Knoxville, with a similar but warmer climate, also near the mountains, gets 2600 hours of sunshine per year.
Chicago gets 2500. Des Moines gets 2700.
Denver gets 3100. I'm very happy with 3100.
Phoenix gets 3875. That may be too much for me. I like getting some cloud cover and thunderstorms during the summer.

[doo dah]

What a gloomy cloudy day it is today!

[gortonator]

Originally Posted by lurtsman

Glad to see this thread shifted from it's original measures of "sunny days", which turned about to be a very poorly designed metric because the break points were so arbitrary, to a measure of "average sunshine hours". Using sunshine hours tells us vastly more about how much sunshine an area is receiving, and what months that sunshine comes in. Some places will combine the total sunshine hours with the percent of possible sunshine hours.

Personally, I'm fond of Pittsburgh, but don't live there. I grew up in Portland, OR, which has a fairly similar level of clouds, and my wife and I both found we were depressed during the winters.

Rather than compare Pittsburgh to polar opposite places like Yuma, lets compare sunshine to other cities people might know.
Pittsburgh gets roughly 2000 to 2100 hours of sunshine per year.
Knoxville, with a similar but warmer climate, also near the mountains, gets 2600 hours of sunshine per year.
Chicago gets 2500. Des Moines gets 2700.
Denver gets 3100. I'm very happy with 3100.
Phoenix gets 3875. That may be too much for me. I like getting some cloud cover and thunderstorms during the summer.

Agreed entirely. Interestingly there is a lot of debate too about what constitutes a sunshine hour. I haven't got time to dig up the thread now from the city data weather forum, but it's an interesting geeky read. All sorts of debates about about how US measures are higher, comparing towns that are next to each other in the great lakes but on opposite sides of the border, etc.

Do you know of any actual sunshine measures for Pittsburgh from recent years? I looked a while back and couldn't find any. I can assert with confidence though that today is adding to the count, and (to another post above) that London is a helluva lot gloomier than Pittsburgh. And Dublin - seriously ....

[charisb]

Originally Posted by doo dah

What a gloomy cloudy day it is today!

I know. I was miserable on my way in to work (I love my job, BTW ) because I forgot my sunglasses!
This discussion is truly pointless (but I guess these are the things that keep the internet going...).

[Goodjules]

Originally Posted by reddesertfox

Agreed,but all four seasons in Pittsburgh are gray.

If you can't take a lot of grey days year round, Pittsburgh would not be a good fit. I spent a good chunk of my life in a grey climate so Pittsburg's greyness was not an adjustment for me, but the summer heat and humidity kill me.