Hoping for Sunshine

Let’s see. It’s been forever since we’ve seen the sun in any measurable way. Or so it seems. I was counting back and believe we haven’t had a really good, sunny day for over two weeks. Then I thought that couldn’t be right and I was being a complainer and grumbler. So I looked at National Weather Service records for the past two weeks or so to see just what had been happening in the way of sunshine. This is what I’ve found.
From April 25th through May 9th is 15 days. One of those days (the 7th of May) has missing data. So we have 14 days to work with. The weather service calculates the actual minutes of sunshine (defined as the sun casting a shadow), the percentage of actual sunshine minutes to possible sunshine minutes, and the prominence of clouds in the sky (using a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 being the most cloudy).
Over the last 14 days, the average number of minutes of sunshine was 208. The percentage of actual sunshine to possible sunshine was 25%. The average cloudiness number on the 0 to 10 scale was 8.2.
Two days had 0 percentage of sunshine. Two more had percentages in the single digits. Five days had a percentage in the teens and two more were in the twenties and thirties. The last three had percentages of 44%, 84% and 92%.
So it’s true. We’ve had a very cloudy and overcast last couple of weeks here in Wichita. It not only seems that way; it is that way. Only two of the last 14 days had a sunshine percentage over 50%. And the cloudiness scale had only two days with fives and none below five. Nines were the most prominent number with five days meriting that score. Tens were next followed by eights and sevens. There was only one six.
This may be boring to you, but I like to manipulate numbers of all kinds in order to extract information and possibly draw conclusions. This exercise was a pleasant one for me, although the clouds and rainy weather is getting a little, shall we say, old.
I’m very careful, however, to tell you that I am not complaining…I’m just hoping that the skies will clear soon and we can take another look at the sun, sunsets, the stars, moon, and other celestial things. The Creator provides us with what we need and we have no business griping about such things. I don’t think it bad, however, to hope for (and even pray for) change in the weather. I’m not praying for sunshine just yet, but if the clouds continue, I may begin.