JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – When you think of dreary weather, some places may come to mind — like the fog-swamped Seattle coastline or the white out from Buffalo’s lake-effect snow machine.
Both of those cities take top spots for the dreariest locations in the country.
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So where does Jacksonville rank on the list? Middle of the road. While not the sunniest like Phoenix, Jacksonville comes in at No. 21 on a dreariness index, which ranges from from 3 (lowest) to 30.
Defining dreary weather can be subjective since no official scientific scale exists. But this didn’t stop meteorologist Brian Brettschneider from analyzing all the factors that turn a sunny day smile upside down.
Brettschneider looked at the number of cloudy and rainy days along with rain totals from the National Climate Data Center’s and Global Climate Historical Network. The compiled data resulted in lower values being less dreary.
Since the values for each data set are from 1 to 10, the range of values from adding them all together are 3 to 30. Of 73 cities with 250,000 people, only a few places received a maximum score of 30: northwest Washington state, southeast Alaska, and windward Hawaii.
Even though Miami has more sunshine than Jacksonville, it received a more dreary score due to wetter and heavier rainfall. Tampa just barely gets a better grade over Jacksonville since it averages one fewer wet day but picks up sunnier days.
This week, the pattern brings several days of cloud cover yet sunshine takes over Saturday and for most areas inland fittingly underpinning the city once more at the middle of the dreary index.