The Cloudiest Cities in the United States

Some cities are defined by their sunshine. These are defined by the lack of it. Rank America's major cities by the hours the sun is actually out over a year and a distinctly gray top ten emerges, several of them limping to fewer than 2,500 hours while desert cities like Phoenix bask in well over 3,000. The usual culprits are geography and winter: marine cloud rolling off the Pacific, cold air streaming over the Great Lakes, and a low December sun that barely clears the rooftops. One caveat before we start: "cloudiest" depends on how you count, and this ranking uses total annual sunshine hours from long-term NOAA averages. Count cloudy days instead and the order shuffles, as we will see. Here are the ten major US cities, cloudiest first, where the sun keeps the lowest profile.

1. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh wears the gray crown, logging only about 2,021 hours of sunshine a year, the fewest of any major US city. The old steel town sits where three rivers meet in the hills of western Pennsylvania, close enough to Lake Erie to catch its share of lake-effect overcast. Winter is where it earns the title: in December the city may see the sun on as few as eight days all month. The upside, if there is one, is that those same clouds help keep Pittsburgh's summers surprisingly mild for the region.

2. Anchorage, Alaska

Alaska's largest city runs on extremes, and sunshine is no exception. Anchorage averages around 2,061 hours a year, but the distribution is wild: December delivers a miserly 50 or so hours across the entire month, while May pours out nearly 290. Wedged between the Chugach Mountains and the waters of Cook Inlet, the city sits in the path of damp weather systems spinning off the North Pacific, which keep it overcast far more often than its northern reputation for endless snow would suggest.

3. Seattle, Washington

No city is more synonymous with gloom than Seattle, and roughly 2,170 hours of annual sunshine backs up the reputation. The Emerald City sits under a near-permanent marine cloud layer that drifts in off the Pacific and gets trapped against the Cascades to the east. The twist locals love to point out is that Seattle does not actually get that much rain by volume; it just gets a lot of gray, drizzly, overcast days, the kind that never quite commit to a downpour.

4. Columbus, Ohio

Ohio's capital and largest city takes in about 2,183 hours of sunshine a year, putting it squarely in the gray belt that stretches across the Great Lakes region. Ohio winters are notoriously overcast, as cold air spilling across the relatively warm Great Lakes parks a lid of cloud over the state for weeks at a time. Columbus is not on a lake itself, but it sits close enough to the machine to share in the gloom.

5. Portland, Oregon

Portland rounds out the top five with about 2,341 hours a year, the other half of the Pacific Northwest's famous gloom. Set where the Willamette and Columbia Rivers meet and hemmed in by the Coast Range and the Cascades, Oregon's biggest city draws long, damp, overcast winters from the same Pacific storm track that soaks Seattle. All that cloud and drizzle has a payoff, though: it is exactly what keeps the Rose City as as green as its nickname promises.

6. Detroit, Michigan

The Motor City sees roughly 2,436 hours of sunshine a year, hitting its grayest stretch between November and January, when December scrapes together only around 65 hours of sun. Ringed by the Great Lakes, Michigan is one of the cloudiest states in the country through the cold months. Come summer, though, Detroit flips the script entirely, with July often topping 300 hours of sunshine.

7. Indianapolis, Indiana

The Crossroads of America logs about 2,440 hours of sunshine a year. Sitting in the middle of Indiana with no mountains or oceans to soften the seasons, Indianapolis gets the full swing of a continental climate: humid, storm-prone summers and long, cloudy winters. December is the low point, when the city musters only around 100 hours of sun across the whole month.

8. Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Perched right on the shore of Lake Michigan, Milwaukee averages around 2,484 hours of sunshine a year. Its lakefront setting is a big part of the story: the same water that cools its summers feeds banks of cloud over the city in fall and winter, the classic Wisconsin lake-effect pattern. Like most of this list, Milwaukee bottoms out in December at roughly 100 hours of sun.

9. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's largest city takes in about 2,498 hours of sunshine a year, making it one of the sunnier entries on a decidedly gray list. On the Delaware River in the mid-Atlantic, Philadelphia trades Great Lakes overcast for cloudy, damp winters driven by coastal storm systems. It still spends a good chunk of the cold season under cloud, but by the standards of the cities above it, Philly is practically bright.

10. Chicago, Illinois

The Windy City closes out the ten at about 2,508 hours of sunshine a year, the sunniest of the cloudiest, which is a bit like being the tallest jockey. Sitting on Lake Michigan, Illinois's biggest city gets the full four-season treatment: gray, blustery, lake-effect winters at one extreme and bright, humid summers at the other. It lands on the list mostly on the strength of its long, cloud-locked cold season.

It Depends How You Count

Here is the twist promised at the top. Rank by sunshine hours and Pittsburgh wins the gloom; rank by the number of genuinely cloudy days and the map redraws itself. By that measure the cloudiest major city in the country is Juneau, Alaska, which gets full sun on only about 44 days a year, done in by storms boiling off the Gulf of Alaska. The Pacific Northwest towns of Olympia and Astoria are close behind, and around the Great Lakes, Buffalo and Cleveland each pile up more than 200 overcast days a year, courtesy of the same lake-effect machine that grays out Columbus and Detroit. None of those three crack this hours-based top ten, a good reminder that there is more than one way to ruin a picnic.

The Cloudiest Major US Cities By Annual Sunshine

Here is the full ranking of the ten major US cities with the fewest hours of sunshine per year, based on long-term NOAA averages.