Portland Apparently Has the Third Most Depressing Winter in the Country

Portland was recently ranked third on a list of US cities with the most depressing winters. This isn't really a surprise. It does get pretty damn depressing here.

A real estate site considered factors like percentage of sunlight and solar radiation from the months of November through February to determine which cities had the darkest and most depressing winters. Solar radiation measurement considers how much energy a solar panel generates on a single winter day. The two metrics were calculated to determine an overall index score.

Seeing only six hours of sunlight in the winter months, Anchorage, the city that brought us Sarah Palin, was determined to be the most depressing city in the US. Seattle came in second seeing sunlight only 28 percent of the time in the winter.

Portland ranked third with its winters being sunny only 29 percent of the time. For daily solar radiation, Portland scored 1.35 kilowatt hours per meter squared during the winter months resulting in an index score of 29.62 overall.

Behind Portland are the slightly less seasonally depressed cities of Spokane with a 30 percent sunshine rate and 35 percent for Missoula, Mont. to close out the top five of gloomiest winter locales.

Conversely, the cities with the sunniest and somehow least depressing winters are Tucson with 81 percent sunshine followed by El Paso with 80 percent and Key West with 73 percent sunshine in the winter months—essentially cities where it's depressing and hot af year round.

Why do people even want to live here again?

One of the key findings of the study to no one's surprise, is that the Pacific Northwest has the perfect combination of short days and constant cloud cover to create darkness during the winter months.

Luckily, we have learned to embrace our seasonal depression as part of the PNW identity.