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Old 02-16-2011, 12:44 PM
 
Location: Surrey, London commuter belt
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Overcast means no sun recorded.
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Old 02-16-2011, 02:03 PM
 
Location: Mid Atlantic USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by B1987 View Post
London gets fewer 100% sunny days, but more partly cloudy days and fewer overcast days than Seattle. Of course when you get to the south coast of England, many locations have similar sunshine totals to Seattle (1900 vs 2000 hrs), with 60-70 hrs in Dec and 240-250 hrs in Jul.

The longest I've gone without seeing the sun here in winter is about 5-6 days. I'm sure the PNW gets far longer stretches of gloom.
Seattle actually gets 2200 hours of sun which seems a few hundred more than anywhere in England.

There is another difference between Seattle and London. While a person in London can drive down to the south coast of England and get close to, but not more than the sun hours of Seattle, a person in Seattle can drive 120 miles southeast and get 2800 hours of sun. That is a feat no person in England could match.
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Old 02-16-2011, 02:19 PM
 
Location: Mid Atlantic USA
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Originally Posted by B1987 View Post
Overcast means no sun recorded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by B1987 View Post
London gets about 45 overcast days but I'm not sure how many clear days it gets. Somewhere between 50-100 probably.
I'm sorry but I simply don't buy the 45 days of overcast for London, unless the table referenced is completely wrong. Yuma, AZ gets 52 cloudy days a year vs. 45 in London. I've been to London many times. It is ridiculously cloudy compared to almost anywhere in the US. Anyone taking a look at that table and then comparing to 45 overcast days in London, no way!! Then those 220 partly cloudy days in London must certainly be more like 90% cloud.
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Old 02-16-2011, 02:38 PM
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Location: Western Massachusetts
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tom77falcons View Post
I'm sorry but I simply don't buy the 45 days of overcast for London, unless the table referenced is completely wrong. Yuma, AZ gets 52 cloudy days a year vs. 45 in London. I've been to London many times. It is ridiculously cloudy compared to almost anywhere in the US. Anyone taking a look at that table and then comparing to 45 overcast days in London, no way!! Then those 220 partly cloudy days in London must certainly be more like 90% cloud.
As he said, the overcast days for London is 100% cloudy. The US weather service considers anything 80% or more as overcast, which is why Yuma has 52 cloudy days. They don't keep statistics on days that were 100% cloudy, though I suppose you could go through years of weather data and calculate it yourself if you wanted to.

I've been to London a number of times. The weather tends to shift a lot, at least skycover-wise, so there's often a break in the cloud. I didn't think it was much worse than upstate NY winter cloudiness for this reason.

It's probably saying something about how cloudy the country is that they require 100% cloudy to be considered an overcast.
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Old 02-16-2011, 04:27 PM
 
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tom77falcons View Post
Seattle actually gets 2200 hours of sun which seems a few hundred more than anywhere in England.

There is another difference between Seattle and London. While a person in London can drive down to the south coast of England and get close to, but not more than the sun hours of Seattle, a person in Seattle can drive 120 miles southeast and get 2800 hours of sun. That is a feat no person in England could match.
You can also drive to somewhere like Aberdeen, with about 1600 hours making it the cloudiest part of the US.
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Old 02-16-2011, 04:29 PM
 
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Originally Posted by nei View Post
As he said, the overcast days for London is 100% cloudy. The US weather service considers anything 80% or more as overcast, which is why Yuma has 52 cloudy days. They don't keep statistics on days that were 100% cloudy, though I suppose you could go through years of weather data and calculate it yourself if you wanted to.

I've been to London a number of times. The weather tends to shift a lot, at least skycover-wise, so there's often a break in the cloud. I didn't think it was much worse than upstate NY winter cloudiness for this reason.

It's probably saying something about how cloudy the country is that they require 100% cloudy to be considered an overcast.
Overcast means no sun whatsoever? That's not a very good way to measure it, imo. Here in Perth we have probably less than 10 such days a year, and places in the sub-tropics can go a whole year without such a day (St. Petersburg, Florida recorded something like 700 days in a row of sunshine, but this didn't mean clear days).
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Old 02-16-2011, 04:36 PM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

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Location: Western Massachusetts
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Trimac20 View Post
Overcast means no sun whatsoever? That's not a very good way to measure it, imo. Here in Perth we have probably less than 10 such days a year, and places in the sub-tropics can go a whole year without such a day (St. Petersburg, Florida recorded something like 700 days in a row of sunshine, but this didn't mean clear days).
It would be interesting in the places I've lived. But the reasons you gave are probably why the US doesn't report it; half of the country would have very low numbers. A single fully cloudy days not occurring seems rather foreign to me.
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Old 02-16-2011, 06:51 PM
 
Location: Mid Atlantic USA
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Originally Posted by nei View Post
As he said, the overcast days for London is 100% cloudy. The US weather service considers anything 80% or more as overcast, which is why Yuma has 52 cloudy days. They don't keep statistics on days that were 100% cloudy, though I suppose you could go through years of weather data and calculate it yourself if you wanted to.

I've been to London a number of times. The weather tends to shift a lot, at least skycover-wise, so there's often a break in the cloud. I didn't think it was much worse than upstate NY winter cloudiness for this reason.

It's probably saying something about how cloudy the country is that they require 100% cloudy to be considered an overcast.

Actually I love overcast days in England. To me they have a whole different look to an overcast day here. It's something about the landscape and architecture I think. I'm not trying to disparage the climate in the UK. I just thought those numbers looked crazy. I could never live in Yuma with all that harsh sunlight. But I realize that many people, maybe most, prefer sun over cloud. I think a warm cloudy day, which London can get in summer, is really nice.
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Old 02-16-2011, 07:47 PM
 
Location: New Jersey
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I'm surprised Yuma has 52 cloudy days a year. Then again, that still leaves over "300 days with sunshine".

I hear much of the UK is stark as far as landscape, so based on that, I'm sure I would prefer an overcast day here compared to there. I love the look of evergreens/forests against a cloudy sky.
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Old 02-16-2011, 11:04 PM
 
Location: motueka nz
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I had a winter in the PNW in the 80's, and it wasn't nice. The summer is to my liking though. I could get used to the climate of Columbus, even with the colder winters it looks better overall. The geography of Seattle (and the PNW) would be the deciding factor for me, rather than the climate.
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