America's Dreariest Cities

Jon Erdman
Published: March 28,2015



 
Do you think your city is the cloudiest, or the rainiest, or overall the most dreariest?
One meteorologist may have settled the debate regarding which U.S. cities are dreariest.
As you may suspect, cities in the Great Lakes, New England, Pacific Northwest and the south coast of Alaska scored high on a "dreariness index", calculated by Brian Brettschneider, a meteorologist based in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brettschneider calculated the index using average annual precipitationas well as the number of days with precipitation and cloud cover. The higher the number, the more dreary the weather.
Temperatures were not factored into the rankings, which would explain the surprisingly high "dreary" indices in some warmer locations such as Miami, Jacksonville, and Atlanta. Wind was also not considered.
Certainly, the Great Lake are an influence for many cities. For instance, consider the drearier lake-effect belts from northeast Ohio into western and central New York compared to, say, the somewhat less dreary western regions of the Great Lakes, Wisconsin in particular.
The Appalachians, Adirondacks, Green and White Mountains frequently serve as a source of lift for clouds and precipitation, especially in the winter after an arctic cold front has cleared the rest of the East. This shows up nicely on the dreariness map, as well.
Finally, there are a pair of stunning "rain shadows" in Brettschneider's map:
1) From cloudy, wet western Washington and western Oregon - and the snowy Cascades - to drier, sunnier interior Northwest.
2) From the cloudy, showery windward side of the Big Island of Hawaii to the sunnier, drier Kona Coast on the island's leeward side.
By rain shadow, we mean moist air is forced to rise as it slams into mountain ranges - for example, the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest - wringing out precipitation on the windward side, before descending and, thus, drying out on the leeward side.
You can see the complete list of cities in order from most to least dreary in Brettschneider's blog post near the bottom.
If you like looking at the bright side, Brettschneider followed up with a list of the cities with the most picture-perfect weather days.
(MORE CITIES LISTS: Windiest | Coldest | Snowiest)