Monday, November 1, 2010

And Now, the REAL Sucky Season Starts

All in all, October wasn't too sucktacular in Bend. We had more days of sun (20) than suck (11), and even a few days of genuinely pleasant, semi-warm, Indian summer weather.

Since Oct. 22, however, it's been pretty much solid suck all the way, and based on Blackdog's 25 years of experience we can expect more or less continuously sucky conditions to prevail from now until late June.

The Bend climate is truly suckalicious not only because the weather is cold and gray more days than not, but also because the sunny, tolerably warm days are crowded into a pathetically brief period -- two or three months, mostly.

Of the first 10 months of 2010, five (June, July, August, September and October) have had more days of sun than days of suck -- 118 to 35. That's almost an 80/20 sun-to-suck ratio -- pretty nice. Half of the sunny days (59) came in July and August.

On the other hand, the entire five-month period from January through May had only 61 days of sun. That works out to a nearly 60/40 suck-to-sun ratio.

Now that November's here, don't expect the sunny day total to rise significantly. Sunshine is going to be a very scarce commodity in Bend for the rest of the current year.

I'm expecting the final, total annual suck-to-sun ratio to be roughly 60/40, maybe a bit worse. Stay tuned.

October Totals

Days of Sun: 20
Days of Suck: 11

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 179
Days of Suck: 125

Postscript: In compliance with the terms of my bet that Bend would not record 160 days of sunshine in 2010, which I lost, Jack Elliott presented me with The Shirt of Shame this month, and I wore it in public, once. MORAL: You Don't Bet Jack.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nor do you take a "t" from my last name without suffering highly disagreeable consequences.

Anonymous said...

"Half of the sunny days (59) came in July and August" ( I rest my case )

Yep, it's hunker down time. Expectations plummet, depression sets in. Here's my real issue w/ OR weather. Often it's not as clear cut as Sun/Suck.

In fact I'd bet that a good many of our days ( especially in the Valley ) fall somewhere in between! Tantalizing w/ promise one moment, overcast a drizzle the next.

One of projects I've entertained over the years is to build an indoor/outdoor atrium or... sunroom or heated slab patio-daddy-o kind of deal but have never been able to settle on a design or had the right property?

I've looked into Trombe` Walls and passive heat retention.., one year we even rigged up a massive cargo-chute! Anyone have any designs they've found acceptable to make things tolerable in the interim? TIA.

H. Bruce Miller said...

A typo, a mere innocent typo, I assure you. It has been corrected.

Anonymous said...

Oops, lost a post there. Anyway, I was sharing that it may be over simplified to only say "Days of Sun/Suck"?

A good many days, particularly here in the Valley, fall maddeningly somewhere in between! It's where we spend most of our year.

I've looked into designs that might enable you to make the best of this on-the-fence weather by exploring Trombe` Walls, heated slab gazeebo's etc. w/ little success.

Has anyone seen/heard of designs that enable ( read trick ) you into thinking you actually 'are' outdoors! Enjoying really great weather? Partial atrium.., sun room, any thing? Just curious.

H. Bruce Miller said...

Yes, it's often difficult to classify a day as either sunny or sucky here in Bend, where we have many days on which the sun goes in and out of the clouds every 15 seconds, seems like. I just do the best I can. If anything, I try to be generous in rating days as sunny.

Re your question, there are several companies that make insulated glass enclosures of various sizes that can be added on to a room of your house to create a small sunroom. Try using the Google.

Anonymous said...

"If anything, I try to be generous"

Oh exactly. I've even lowered the bar to such a degree I now rate Craptacularness by "not raining hard enough to soak 'though' shoes". Insufficient cloud cover to 'seriously' contemplate suicide, etc.

The problem is ( and I've Googled my little fingers to the bone! ) is that the PNW in terms of population barely qualifies as a rounding error and there's little if anything regarding structures to contend w/ our Unweather.

I've researched strawbale homes, passive heating/cooling techniques etc. etc. It's just that 'we' ( the truly FED UP of the PNW ) don't constitute enough of a market to warrant serious research and/or solutions. If it rained 10 mos. out of the year in NYC, the issue would have been addressed by now.

At our old house in Molalla I built what I called "Rapa Titi", the southern-most exposed part of the house w/ as many heat-retaining/generating features as possible! Often we BBQ'd 'outdoors' up to and thru Nov. Even if we only spend part/most of the year here, I'd like to be as comfortable as possible. Why suffer any more than is absolutely essential?

Anonymous said...

Yeah we heard...they call it DEDUS.