Dear Tom,
We had a record cloudy streak earlier this year. How has the rest of 2017 stacked up since then?
— Zoe Bottger
Dear Zoe,
This past January was indeed a dismal month. It ranked as the city’s second cloudiest January, logging just 23 percent of possible sunshine, runner-up to January 1998, which tallied an even drearier 20 percent. The month featured a run of eight sunless days from Jan. 22-29, falling far short of the city’s record 12-day streak from Dec. 29, 1991-Jan. 9, 1992.
February produced a significant improvement in sunshine, logging 56 percent, well above the month’s 47 percent normal. However, while certainly not as extreme as January, March has regained a cloudy nature with sunshine averaging just 41 percent through Thursday, compared with the month’s normal of 49 percent.
