Sunshine hours: how much sun do you need to feel comfortable? (snow, recorded)

[RWood]

Originally Posted by Kaul

500 hours maximum and no more. I am not a photosynthetic plant.

You need a horizon restriction then. There's no evidence of any location with a fully "open sky" getting as little as that - minimum such is probably just a little less than 600.

[dunno what to put here]

I laughed at Kaul's comment.

[Nivalis]

Not sure, maybe 1500-2000 minimum. Never lived in places that cloudy, though.
I don't have an upper limit if temperatures stay below 75°F >99% of the time.

[nei]

Where I live is fine; though sometimes we get stretches of continuous cloudy weather. So, 2300-2600 hours is comfortable. More sun than clouds, but not much more. A good even mix of everything. Much more sunshine might get monotonous and start to feel weatherless.

I think we focus a bit too much on sunshine hours and not the distribution of sunshine and the type of clouds (for example, some weather reports contain average sky cover each day). Like, I enjoy bright overcast days, and mostly cloudy days where I can see the shape of the clouds (as long as it doesn't go on forever). I don't care for blank featureless gray skies. Partly cloudy skies where there's blue skies but a cloud is blocking the sun are almost as nice as sunny skies. A climate where the sunshine is distributed into cloudy days and sunny days with few in between partly cloudy days would be less appealing than one where you can have days with a mix of sun and clouds.

As I said before, I suspect the Pacific Northwest feels worse than its sunshine hours given that for much of the year it has very long stretches of cloudy weather with no sun as opposed to a series of mostly cloudy days where the sun peeks out for a short time each day.

[ben86]

Originally Posted by nei

As I said before, I suspect the Pacific Northwest feels worse than its sunshine hours given that for much of the year it has very long stretches of cloudy weather with no sun as opposed to a series of mostly cloudy days where the sun peeks out for a short time each day.

Do you have any figures on long sunless spells there? I couldn't find a longer stretch than five days with no sun at all but some of the worst ones last winter here:
30th November - 4th December (inclusive) = 0.7 hours over five days
15th December - 23rd December = 2.5 hours over nine days (including seven with none at all)
27th December - 1st January = 0.5 hours over six days
22nd January - 29th January = 0.9 hours over eight days
18th February -23rd February = 0.9 hours over six days (including five consecutive with none at all)

[dunno what to put here]

What a difference a few miles makes, December 2010 and January 2011 were both very sunny here with hardly any cloud, or rain.

[ilovemycomputer90]

There was a noticeably long stretch of overcast weather this past spring. I would assume nei experienced similar conditions. I think it was in April.

[Weatherfan2]

Originally Posted by dunno what to put here

What a difference a few miles makes, December 2010 and January 2011 were both very sunny here with hardly any cloud, or rain.

In Buxton:

Dec 2010: 27.5hrs - 87.3% cloudy during the daylight hours, LOL.
Jan 2011: 39hrs

But we get half the sunshine of most places in the UK in winter.

[Stumbler.]

Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90

There was a noticeably long stretch of overcast weather this past spring. I would assume nei experienced similar conditions. I think it was in April.

I recall it was quite cloudy/rainy/drizzly for April (and May) this year in Southern Ontario here too.

[ChesterNZ]

Originally Posted by Kaul

500 hours maximum and no more. I am not a photosynthetic plant.

I might have suggested the South Pole (or elsewhere on the Antarctic plateau) as an ideal climate for you, but I guess it wouldn't suit, given the 3000 or so sunshine hours there.