Minnesota experiences the sunniest month in 75 years

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - You can no longer complain that Minnesota doesn't see the sun. We're heading into our cold season, and there is naturally less daylight, but it has been a phenomenally sunny few weeks.

According to analysis from the Alaska state climatologist and the ERA5 climate data, it was not only the sunniest September since 1940 but the sunniest month on record overall, dating back to 1950.

All of the bright yellow in the image above shows areas that have just experienced their sunniest September on record, encompassing much of Minnesota and the Great Lakes.

It makes sense, considering how warm and dry our month was. Just a couple of small storm systems rolled through the area over the entire month, bringing spotty rain and storms at best. To break down the data even more, the graph below shows the monthly average cloud cover for every month since daily data was available starting in 1950.

Notice that the line dips to the lowest level all the way to the right of the graph. That indicates Minnesota had clouds in the sky just 27% of the time through the month, beating out a month in 1969 that had 29% of the month covered in clouds.