After a gloomy week, when will the sun finally return to Newfoundland?

Living on the edge of the continent puts Newfoundland at the forefront of change. The island is the first to greet the new year. Travellers from Europe gaze upon its rocky shores before any other.

But change isn’t always in the cards when it comes to vast storms swirling over the open Atlantic. A dismal maritime pattern has deprived most folks in Newfoundland of sunshine since April 27.

The system responsible for this unwelcome stretch of damp and dreary conditions isn’t going anywhere in a hurry, and it may be a full week before the gloom lifts for some lucky communities.

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A dismal stretch of mid-spring weather

Not since the great eclipse have the skies over Newfoundland looked so dim.

A broad upper-level low over the northwestern Atlantic Ocean got cut off from the jet stream last weekend. Cutoff lows are notorious for meandering over the same spots for days at a time, essentially stuck in place until a pattern change arrives to finally shove them along.

Friday, April 26, was the last day we saw meaningful sunshine in St. John’s. Widespread cloud cover greeted the day on Sunday, and conditions across the Avalon—and most of Newfoundland—have been persistently cloudy and damp ever since.

Minimal sunlight reaching the ground

One of the great benefits of modern weather stations is that they often have devices called pyranometers that can directly measure the amount of sunshine reaching the ground.

Solar radiation increases sharply after sunrise, peaks in the middle of the day, and tapers off through sunset. A sunny day with no clouds in the sky would produce a perfect curve when the data is charted out.

We can see the everlasting gloom through solar radiation data gathered by a climate station in St. John’s over the past six days.

Ideally, every day would look like Friday, April 26. But clouds started pushing in the next day, and thick clouds that arrived Sunday have led to day after day of muted sunshine reaching the surface.

When will the sun return?

Lucky folks across southwestern Newfoundland have already seen some breaks in the clouds and a return of sunshine this week. But things are still looking grey for northern and eastern parts of the island.

That stalled system is in no rush to mosey out of the region. Even though precipitation should ease up on Friday, clouds are likely to stick around into the weekend as northerly winds persist across much of the island.

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Western and central sections of Newfoundland might see breaks in the clouds and even patches of clearing to allow for much-needed sunshine on Saturday. Down on the Avalon, it looks like Sunday might be the big day when a wind shift finally allows some clearing to take hold.

Soak up the vitamin D while you can, though. Forecasters expect some rain to return to the region next week.

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