I just Goggled the cities (population over 20,000) in the United States with the
least amount of sunshine per year. The top fifteen were in the state of Washington and ten of them enjoyed fewer than 40% of sunny days per annum.
Charleston, West Virginia, is #16 on this list of dreariest cities - with Pittsburgh following closely at #17. Those two hover around 45% sunshine.The statistics stop at #102 and the last five spots are all in Illinois with only 53% sunny days.
Tallahassee, Florida, where I am sitting this morning, usually has an average of 231 sunny, or mostly sunny, days per year - ten more than my old house in Jacksonville that easily saw 63% sunshine. I equate Jacksonville rain with the occasional nor'easter, nearly-daily summer-afternoon thunderstorms, and rainy but warm (no more than two at a time) winter days.
I woke up to another foggy, muggy, unseasonably hot, and overcast morning. The forecast is for more of the same all day, Saturday, and Sunday. Trending keywords are rain, wind, and cloud. In Tallahassee, when it rains, it pours. And pours.
I made myself a pot of strong coffee and baked a biscuit to have with a sausage patty, eschewing my "good" breakfast of herbal tea and protein shake. Variety is, after all, the spice of life. Spice? I sprinkled the coffee with cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg to enhance quality.
I've decided to use a picture of sunny and butterfly-saturated (not dreary) Lake Petty Gulf along with this annoying weather post, for I never think of Tallahassee as rainy. I always picture this city basking in fresh, beautiful spring mornings; smelling of neighborhood fireplaces roaring on sunny, bright, cold winter afternoons - when the light is perfect and shines, blaring, into my porch and kitchen window; and suffering happily through long, hot, summer days filled with sunshine, emitting smells of cut grass and of the Red Hills clay on which my little house is perched.
