Fewest Sunny Days In 25 Years

July in Iceland has so far had one of the fewest sunny days in over a generation.

MBL reports that July has only had three completely cloudy days so far – July 1, 10 and 18. However, a lack of completely cloudy days does not necessarily mean an abundance of sunny days.

50.6 hours of sunlight have been recorded for the month of July so far. This is 58.5 fewer hours than the sunlight average for July calculated from 1961 to 1990, and 85.3 fewer hours than the average over the past ten years.

In fact, there has not been this little sunlight in July since 1989, when the first 20 days of July only showed 32.1 hours of sunlight. The all-time low for sunlight hours in July was in 1926, at just 28.7 hours.

While the lack of sunny days in the summer in Iceland might be cause for disappointment for some, as meteorologist Trausti Jónsson pointed out, cool, cloudy summers in Iceland is the rule, not the exception.