Not the cloudiest month ever
December 31st, 2008 at 5:57 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
<–Ludington sunset Monday. The wind was strong and you can see the huge wave breaking over the Ludington Lighthouse – click picture to enlarge. The official sunshine total for today was 404 minutes or 72%. That lifted us out of the basement – so this is not the cloudiest month ever (it would have been if it was a 30-day month). That gave us 7.2% sunshine for December, above the record 5.1% of possible sunshine in November 1992. I still have to check and see if this is by chance the cloudiest December. So…we had the 2nd snowiest December, 2nd snowiest month, wettest year and 1st or 2nd cloudiest December. It gave me a lot to talk about. (Picture by Brad Reed).
WOW! No sun….I did see it for a brief time yesterday. It is nice to see when it comes out. I also saw it on Monday. I think those were the only days of the month with sunshine to see.
HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody! 2009! I hope its a great year for you all!
November 1992… The Minnesota state high school cross country meet was postponed due to nearly three feet of snow on Halloween and I didn’t see bare ground there until 1993. The cold air must have crossed the lake and clouded things up here in Michigan. That was a good year. I love snow.
15° here I recorded only 1.5″ of new snow here last night. Right now at 8:40 AM the sky is clear and the sun is just coming up so we might very well get that 1 hour of sun…My guess is we will get more then that today but we shall see.
SlimJim
Happy New Year to everyone!!
happy new year guys!
November 1992 I was up in the Manistee Nat’l Forest doing a wilderness survival weekend trip for my college class. No tents, no sleeping bags, and all you had was what you could carry in a coffee can (though most of us cheated a bit due to the conditions…. sterno helped get our fire going)! We woke up with a light dusting of snow. I remember it had rained the week before the trip, so everything was wet. Then it got really cold, and during all of the daytime hours we were there (Friday morning to Saturday night) it felt like late evening due to all the clouds. Windchills were low, as were the temps. It was a rough weekend, but I’m glad I did it.
Oh, and here’s to 2009! May it be the year that we all need to put a little “sunshine” in our lives!
Michael D….we sure do need some sun light in our lives….something to think about with the lack of sunshine….people who have depression issues (even mild cases) have not had a very good month…..economic isuues, holiday times (family problems and/or lose) and a huge amount of non-sunshine…. we should all look around us and see who might need some encouragement and not doom and gloom talk, spread some chear!!!!!! We all need it!!! Have a Happy, Cheerful, Healthy and Blessed New Year!!!!!!
Thats the thing. Wisconsin gets colder because of more sunshine than Lower Michigan. It’s been sunny here more than Michigan but way colder!
That snow melt last week knocked the midwest snow cover dowwn from 100% to 77.9%, still not bad for this time of year!
flurries here 22*
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/index.html?year=2008&month=12&day=31&units=e®ion=Northern_Great_Lakes
23° with some sun and off and on flurries….
I hope everone has a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
I know we need a change and I hope the new year brings that (for the better that is)
SlimJim
Cold here, but man that sun was a welcome treat. That taste of Spring this past weekend spoiled Winter for me. Oh well, something to look forward to!
[...] Lions? Appropriately enough, we are even going to come close to (if not surpass) the record for the cloudiest month ever here in West [...]
Happy New Year to the entire blogger family! May each and every one of you be filled with blessings throughout 2009 and beyond! (and lots of sunshine too!)
)
This might be a dumb question, but: how is the total amount of sunshine in a day measured? Is there somebody in the weather office looking out the window with a stopwatch in hand? Or is there some kind of sensor that records it – or maybe satellite imagery?
…just curious.
Bill…You should also check to see if this was the year that the heaviest precip. fell in tons/gallons!
Good question … how do you measure sunshine — especially on partly cloudy days?
You originally said:
If I do 8 hours x 60 minutes and then add 49 minutes I get 529 minutes. So we nearly doubled up on Sun in one day? That’s impressive I guess.
How are you calculating the available time? On sunrise to sunset? If 404 is 72% then there must be 561 available minutes of sunshine? That seems a little longer than sunrise to sunset time which would be in the 544 minute range I think?
Super web site.. hope to definitely visit soon:)