Tourists atop Griffith Park on Wednesday morning got a clear picture of what life in Los Angeles has been like lately: gray as far as the eye can see.
It was yet another stormy morning in a city synonymous with sunshine.
“I mean, look, we need the rain, don’t we,” said Addison Vincent, 30, who had just made the muddy trek to the top. “But that’s just a bit excessive. »
On dreary days like this, Vincent said they usually stay at home in Hollywood — gorging on HBO’s “Succession” and watching their ferns and jade plants on the patio soak irretrievably. It was mentally draining, they said, “bringing a lot of melancholy and sadness.”
For many Angelenos, this winter has been the darkest in recent memory. According to weather data analyzed by The Times, this was truly the dullest winter Southern Californians have experienced in recent memory.
Meteorologists will be quick to tell you that there is no scientific definition of bleak. Contrary to precipitation et snow depthboth carefully monitored by the National Weather Service, no television forecaster calculates how often the weather has made Angelenos want to hide under the covers.
But the National Weather Service tracks the average sky coverage between sunrise and sunset each day.
The Times analyzed four years of weather data recorded over downtown Los Angeles from January to March. The city has seen about 15 more cloudy days this year than in previous years, the data showed.
According to the National Weather Service, a day is considered cloudy when 80% or more of the sky is covered in cloud. A partly cloudy day corresponds to cloud cover between 40% and 70% of the sky. Days when clouds cover less than 40% of the sky are considered clear.
The cloudy period is something that sun-starved Southern Californians have probably felt before.
A supplier of light therapy lamps, which blast users with artificial light, says sales are up 50% in Los Angeles from last winter. A salesperson at a Hollywood plant store said he’s seen more customers complaining about plants wilting from lack of sunlight, as well as those clearly being left out in too many torrential downpours. Some medical professionals say they have seen an increase in the number of patients with common symptoms of seasonal affective disordera form of depression linked to a change of seasons.
“It’s a lot of wanting to sleep more, having trouble getting out of bed,” said Sierra Kuzava, a clinical psychologist at UCLA Health. ” [People are] feel like something is hanging over their head – because it is.
There are several reasons relentless gray days can wreak havoc on people’s mental health, she said. Lack of sunlight can mess with people’s internal clocks, making them sleepy at bad times and dampening their mood. It can also decrease levels of serotonin, a chemical messenger that regulates mood, appetite, and sleep. Additionally, bad weather means that plans for mood-enhancing activities, such as biking or walking on a beach, are crushed.
Kuzava says she likes to remind her patients of a positive point: the gray days are numbered.
“Recognizing that there is this connection between the weather and how you feel can be very helpful, in part because it helps you recognize that you are likely to feel better when the weather changes,” she said. declared. “That alone can be helpful. »
Another way to quantify how dreary it was: the number of rainy days that forced people back inside.
“It’s probably in the top 10 darkest winters due to the number of stormy days we’ve had,” National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Kittell said.
Kittell said downtown Los Angeles receives an average of 29 rainy days in the six months between October and March. Between October 2022 and March this year, there were 46 days when it rained.
On just four other occasions, Angelenos endured more rainy days between October and March. The record was set in 1940-41, a particularly wet period in Los Angeles history that saw 51 days of rain.
Since October, 27.42 inches of rain has been dumped on downtown Los Angeles, according to the National Weather Service. That’s more than the famously rainy cities of Portland, which had 26.03 inches, and Seattle, which had 22.50 inches.
Spencer Pennington moved from the outskirts of Seattle to Los Angeles in the fall of 2020. Unlike his always drizzly hometown, he says Los Angeles seems to crumble during downpours. Pennington said the hilly street in front of his Westwood home regularly turns into a small river during storms.
“It’s like a ‘Blade Runner’ type LA,” he said. “It’s not like Randy Newman’s ‘I Love LA'”
But, despite the residential torrents, he said he and Los Angeles natives tend to have differing opinions on what exactly constitutes a gloomy day.
” I am like this? It’s mist! It’s almost beach time where I’m from,” he said. “It’s culturally relative. »
