Dreariness Index (2015)
28 comments
·May 5, 2025bahmboo
Time frequency is an important aspect. 10 days in a row with no sun is maddening for me vs 20 days where it alternates evenly between sun ball and no sun ball.
As the author states:
Of course this methodology is completely arbitrary and far from perfect, but it is a start.ninalanyon
Perhaps someone could do a survey asking people whether they felt the weather was dreary and try to correlate that with cloud cover, precipitation, etc.
For me a good rainstorm is not necessarily dreary and endless sunshine is not necessarily un-dreary.
monkeyfacebag
As someone who has resided both in a foggy part of San Francisco and in Portland, I feel that this index doesn't adequately capture the dreariness of some SF neighborhoods.
caseyohara
Agreed. It doesn't seem right that San Francisco (famously foggy) is ranked less dreary than Denver (famously sunny 300 days a year* and quite arid).
*"300 days of sunshine per year" is frequently cited, even on the official Visit Denver website (https://www.denver.org/meetings/denver-info/weather/). Having lived in Denver for the last ~15 years, it is very sunny, but "300 days a year" stretches the truth just a bit.
davidw
I also live in a "300 days of sunshine" place - Bend, Oregon - where people have examined the number and found it to be a complete fabrication.
It seems that 100 or so years ago, promoters decided that was the magic number to attract people.
madcaptenor
I think to adequately analyze San Francisco you need finer geographic resolution than this data allows.
davidw
One quibble might be Hawai'i. Tropical cloudy/wet doesn't feel quite the same as the 5C (~ 41F) rain/cold/dreary you get in, say, Portland Oregon that just chills you to the bone.
bilater
This tracks. I always say about Seattle its not the rain but the gray that makes it depressing.
qingcharles
100% this. Seattle is probably my favorite city in the USA, but the dreary weather kills it for me.
People say it rains all the time in England, but it's not that. It's the grey that makes it depressing.
lutusp
> Seattle is probably my favorite city in the USA, but the dreary weather kills it for me.
I beg to differ -- a pioneering 1949 Seattle solar energy project offers a different view, and as soon as the sun comes out, they're going to release their final report.
rob74
> In previous posts, I have looked at total rainfall, number of wet days, and cloud cover independently of one another.
Unfortunately those posts aren't linked, so that left me a bit puzzled. A day with rain is also wet (and probably cloudy)? So not sure how you can look at the three independently. Also, what is a "wet day" without rain? Foggy? High air humidity, but no rain?
stevenwoo
I’ve been areas where the cloud height matches or is below the altitude and everything outside is wet. This happens in coastal areas with clouds starting at elevation zero, too. One can ascend the mountains to see the cloud tops.
levocardia
Low end of scale: dark red. High end of scale: bright red. Who makes these decisions!?!?
roxolotl
Love that you can see Mt Washington NH on this map. There’s nothing quite like the weather around it.
xnx
That is a crazy color scale. Both ends are basically red?
bentt
People bust on Buffalo for the snow, but the dreariness makes up for it.
wenc
Can confirm map. Seattle is truly dreary.
qingcharles
Does dreary weather produce nicer people, though? The places with the dreariest weather seem to correlate with lovely populations?
wenc
Yes and no. They produce “nice” people who are polite, but distant. Dreary places encourage introversion so people are much less warm. People are more inward looking and private. They want to mostly keep to themselves.
Seattle is known for Seattle Freeze. I feel this every time I return from travel to another part of the country, even parts of the country that are snowier and colder. In snowier places people have more character and they help each other out a lot more — it’s part of the culture.
But Seattle is just misty rain 9 months of the year. Emotionally it feel bleaker. There’s no pull to help each other out (it’s just rain) and there’s no character building through snow shoveling or brushing snow off your car to meet friends. You just don’t feel like doing anything or admitting anyone in your life.
SCUSKU
I grew up in Seattle, and moved to California in large part because of the seasonal depression I would get. I'm much happier in SF.
I've wanted to do a similar thing for "sweatiness" for a while, to try quantify the amount of time each year you can do outdoor activities or have the windows open without feeling too hot, based on dew point/humidity + temperature.
I grew up somewhere that didn't require air conditioning, but live in NYC now and find that as an adult the only weather I find truly unpleasant is when it's too hot to do anything outside without immediately being drenched in sweat. I really dislike the feeling of being trapped inside in the A/C, since at least even when it's very cold you can be comfortable in proper clothing.
Even without an actual map, though, I've been enjoying many of the visualizations on https://weatherspark.com/ for comparing cities on these kinds of things.