Gloomy winter in rear view? Region can only hope

Groundhog Day and Palindrome Day — 02/02/2020, the same backward and forward — gave us a hopeful hint of things to come.

On Sunday morning, before the crowd gathered at Gobbler’s Knob, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, the traditional predictor of an early spring. And in the afternoon, Pittsburgh got a welcome but all-too-brief glimpse of the sun.

Spring can’t arrive soon enough here, where we see the sun about 45% of days of the year, and there were no sunny days in January.

KDKA-TV meteorologist Ray Petelin, in a website posting titled, “Gloomy Days: Pittsburgh Sees Zero Sunny Days In January,” wrote: “The brightest sky conditions we have been able to produce [were] 12 partly cloudy days. Those are days that feature a mixture of clouds and some sunshine.”

Pittsburghers will get a peek of sun on Monday, according to the National Weather Service, which calls for a partly sunny day. There’s no other mention of that bright spot in the sky for the next 10 days. Temperatures will be unseasonably warm on Monday, up to 54 degrees before heading downhill where they belong for February, with a low of 27 on Friday.

In November, the website BestPlaces.net, which measures

what makes cities fun and not-so-fun, rated the Pittsburgh metro area as No. 5 among the nation’s coldest and cloudiest in the winter. The ratings took into account percentage of cloud cover, average hours of daylight and days with precipitation.

That annual 45% number for “possible sunshine” is from data taken over 49 years, through 2004, by the National Centers for Environmental Information. And here’s another word of caution about the chances of an early spring: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Phil has gotten it right 40% of the time since 2010.

NOAA adds that the most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania got it wrong last year. In 2019, Phil forecast a “short winter,” according to the agency, when he did not see his shadow and predicted an early spring.

“In fact, the contiguous United States saw below-average temperatures in both February and March of last year,” the agency said.