The story of January has far and away been about the cloud cover. Some of the data here is a little crude, but it gets the messaging across. Just how cloudy has January been?
Well, if you take the straight up noon observation at Logan Airport, we had overcast skies 59% of the time. An average January that would be 43%. Since 1970, only three Januaries have been cloudier — last year, 2023, 1998, and 1979.
Now, January is typically one of the cloudier months, this one has just been exceptionally so. December and March tie for first place for frequency of cloudy days, with January and April tied for 3rd.
Looking at the month, again some of this is a little crude, I went through hourly observations of all 30 days. If it appeared there were more clouds than sun, I gave the day a gray square. If it appeared to be more sun than clouds, I gave it a gold square, with some finessing. For example, if there were a ton of clouds but they were the high wispy clouds all day, I would call it sunny. That aside, the takeaways is the same… cloud cover after cloud cover after cloud cover.
And look at those past nine days! We’ve not had sunshine since sunset on Sunday, January 21st! We finished that Sunday with clear skies and those clear skies lasted overnight until 5:50am on Monday morning. So while the clear observation lasted into Monday, if we’re talking sunshine, the sun wasn’t up yet so the day itself was cloudy. Brutal.
So when does the sun come back? I think tomorrow! Now, don’t hold your breath for a wall to wall sunny day, but I do think we’ll have breaks of sun tomorrow, which will be a sight for sore eyes! That might be short lived though, as Thursday looks to feature more clouds once again.
