When I first moved to Omaha from the Northeast many people asked me if I’d taken leave of my senses.  And maybe at the time I had.  Never having lived outside of the Northeast before I admit to being somewhat sheltered from any knowledge of what it was really like to live anywhere else.

What struck me almost immediately was a variation in weather patterns that had a huge effect on my mood.  When you woke up in Connecticut and it was raining – you were in for a rainy day – or two – or three – as much as a week.  In Nebraska that’s rarely the case.  There have been many days when I’ve headed into the office with full rain regalia, hunkering down for the dreary day ahead.  And quite frequently by the time I’d read my initial influx of e-mails the sun was shining high in the sky.  Other days it took as long as until lunchtime before the sun poked through the clouds and dried up all the rain.  An entire rainy day is just not all that common – not to mention a rainy week.

Then there were those cloudy and dank days in the Northeast.  No real threat of rain but no chance of sun.  We had whole weeks of that sometimes.  When that happens in Omaha, the population is totally nonplussed.  They’re just not used to it.

And when you combine this sunshine phenomenon with the fact that we are at the western most edge of the central time zone – which means we hang onto to our sunshine longer into the night – we could take the crankiest Northeasterner and turn them into a purring pussycat!  Just look at me!

When I first raised this point with my colleagues they said I was crazy.  “Omaha doesn’t have the most sunshine by a longshot” they anxiously pointed out.  That’s true.  Omaha has 60% sunshine and Hartford only 4% less at 56%.  Doesn’t seem as though it would make a huge difference – but it does.  And as far as those places that have as much as 90% sunshine like Yuma, Arizona.  I have no desire to fry an egg on my sidewalk during the month of June – Omaha is plenty hot enough for me!

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