Sunniest Versus Cloudiest: Phoenix, USA vs. Chongqing, China
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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wavehunter007
Interesting.
Those numbers for Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Phuket (2500 hrs/ann) are not too bad for high rainfall tropical climates.
As far as the generalizing and misconceptions of Europen climates...I agree. Many people forget (or don't even realize) that there is canyon of difference between temperate high latitude northern Europe and subtropical low latitude southern Europe in terms of sunshine and temps.
Delhi has always struck me as mostly dry place, with a shortish wet season. I actually expected it to have even more sunshine - like 2800-3000 hours. Bangkok has like 2600-2700 hours, which looking at it's rainfall pattern doesn't seem unusually high. Darwin has almost a mirror image rainfall pattern and it gets more like 3000 hours a year.
Hottest month's high and low: 28.3C - 41.4C
Coldest month's high and low: 6.6C - 19.5C
Sunshine Hours: 3,876.1
Rainy Days: 37.7
Rainfall: 210.6mm
In the other corner, cloudy Chongqing, possibly the cloudiest major city in the world. It exemplifies a striking difference between the moist subtropics of Australia and the USA versus those of China, Japan, and surrounding areas: where as the former have sun totals near the same as the typical Mediterranean climates, the Far East's subtropical zone's sunshine hours are often akin to north-west Europe and Alaska.
Hottest month's high and low: 24.7C - 33.6C
Coldest month's high and low: 6.0C - 10.3C
Sunshine Hours: 1,054.9
Rainy Days: 152.0
Rainfall: 1,104.4mm
That's less than half the sunshine of Seattle, less than all major European cities, and even most sub-polar oceanic climates that tend to rack up the cloudy areas. The only cloudier ''city'' I could find was Tórshavn in the Faroes. In other words, if you're a vampire with a taste for hot-pot, consider Chongqing!
[ Since I know there are more extreme stations in smaller locations, I took the choice of pairing the cloudiest major city versus the sunniest major city, choosing the ( admittedly arbitrary ) condition of a metro area of four million or more. I wanted to choose places where a lot of people actually lived rather than Some Anarctic Island versus Half-Dead Tree, AZ ( population: two tumbleweeds, one buffalo skull ). If there are cities of a million or more that are cloudier or sunnier, let me know! ]
All that being said - which would you choose? Sun city or fog town? Summers that bake or summers that steam?
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