We have a few viable things to complain about over here in NYC; subway delays, excessively honking cars, lack of affordable housing, rats, and roaches accounting for just some of them. Thankfully, though, one thing we don’t really have to complain about is the amount of sunshine we get.
Like okay, sure, we could always use more sunshine, but imagine living somewhere like Utqiaġvik, Alaska, where it’s dark for 24 hours for about 60 days during the winter?! Talk about seasonal depression, we’ll take the rats over that…
And with longer days and later sunsets in the palm of our hand all we’ve got is sunshine on our minds, which lends itself to the question: how much sunshine does NYC receive per year?
According to climate.top, NYC averages 2656 hours of sunlight per year, or 7:16 hours of sunlight per day. To put this into perspective, that’s about 30% of the 8760 total hours there are in a year. So, like, not too shabby if you ask us…that is until you take a look at Yuma, Arizona.
Yuma, a southwestern Arizona city on the Mexican border, gets the most sunshine per year of any U.S. city: 4,015 hours of sun per year. That’s a whopping 1,359 more hours than we see over here in NYC.
We New Yorkers are tough, though, and that’s certainly not a lie. So while we wouldn’t say no to a few extra hours of sunshine, we won’t let the lack thereof get us down, and we’re certainly not going to let some overcast skies stop us from having fun–we have a reputation to uphold as the best 24-hour city in the country, after all. Plus, we must admit that there is something romantic about a rainy day–here’s how to make the most of one in NYC.
And on those days when the sun is shining, you can likely find us browsing local produce at a farmers market, laying in the grass and soaking in the sunshine at one of NYC’s many iconic parks, enjoying a delicious meal al fresco, or checking out an open-air art installation!