I’m Martin. I created this site for fellow sun enthusiasts who are tired of gloomy, cold and cloudy weather where they live. I was born in Poland, which looks like this during the winter:
I took this picture at 10:30 AM. If you live in a similar place, I bet you can relate to the feeling of desperation when it feels like you don’t remember what sun looks like.
Ever since I was young, I hated winters, snow, low temperatures, and gray skies. I still remember the anxiety I felt each September, knowing that summer, the best time of year, is about to end. Yet again, I would have to deal with bad weather, inability to engage in my favorite outdoor sports, and seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
Each year, for at least six months—approximately between October and March—I hibernated, desperately waiting for spring. To get a brief respite, I traveled to sunny, warm countries. I felt so much better the moment I landed in my destination, but coming back home—and adapting to the bad weather again—was tough.
Even during the sunny months I was still stressed out. I couldn’t get enough of sunshine. I behaved like an addict, trying to spend as much time as possible outside. I knew that sunny, warm days were limited in Poland, and I didn’t want to regret not taking advantage of every single day of great weather.
I couldn’t live like this anymore. I embarked on a journey to find a new, sunny home for me, with a plan to have a second residence where I could spend the worst months of the year while still living in Poland, too (where I have family and friends who contribute greatly to my quality of life, too).
I quickly noticed that there are many more people like me, dead-tired of dark, cold, gloomy weather where they live, looking for a new home or a second residence like Canadian snowbirds moving to Arizona each winter or Brits heading to Spain or Portugal with mild, pleasant winters. I decided to create a website where I would publish the results of my research of the sunniest destinations in the world and share other tips for people like me struggling with SAD.
Since there are so many individual factors to consider when moving, the destinations I included in the ranking of the sunniest cities in the world meet only some basic requirements like plenty of sunshine and warm weather year round. I’ll discuss in more depth specific destinations in separate articles.
I decided to exclude the poorest destinations from the list because most cold weather expats looking for a new home or residence aren’t interested in those places, preferring countries where they can maintain similar quality of life (or better) to the one they have back home.
I hope that the results of my research will help you identify the most suitable destinations for you.
Hello Martin, I’m Nabi and I too love the sun. I grew up in the region of Paris, France. I felt the same way about the very cold and covered skies most of the time. For my research of good potential places, I use these:
https://weatherspark.com/map Is my favorite website for cumulative meteorological data around the world, lets you see annual cloud cover, solar energy, temperature, humidity and water temperature (the hotter it is, the higher likelihood of cloudiness due to easier evaporation).
https://www.windy.com for short term meteorological watch, animated and accurate
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/globalcldfr_amo_200207-201504_lrg.jpg NASA average cloudiness map around the world
https://en-gb.topographic-map.com Because I want to live in low altitude areas for maximum oxygen saturation, and coastal because I’m thinking of making a solar still.
For now, my best bet is tropical/subtropical regions, West side. Although climate change is starting to affect the cloudiness of all regions, and those areas are being more cloudy due to warmer atmosphere leading to more evaporation and cloud preservation (cold air makes em precipitate, warm air creates and maintains them).
Such areas that are usually very sunny and are now being cloudier are Coastal Namibia, Cape Town, Cairo, Coastal Chile, Californian coast, southern west coast of Australia from Perth to Albany (north of that is actually still very clear/sunny) and coast of Morocco (not by much).
The trade winds are being disrupted, but will stabilize at some point in the future, and subtropics will become the new tropics and more desertic.
Resources on that:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Koppen-Geiger_climate_classification_.gif/1200px-Koppen-Geiger_climate_classification_.gif
https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/hadley-cell-expansion#more
Right now, the best places for a good sun, not too hot temperatures, not too dry and not too humid, with low elevation seem to be west coast of South Africa, Australia, Utah/Arizona/Nevada/Central Valley.
Thanks for your comment and the resources, Nabi. Out of the ones you recommended at the end, South Africa is way too troublesome, Australia is good, and the US is tricky with very little rain and actually too little water for residents (it’s unsustainable).