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    What is a heliophile?

    A heliophile is someone who loves the sun: clear skies, long evenings, the first warm afternoon of spring. Merriam-Webster’s definition is “one attracted or adapted to sunlight”, and biologists use it for sun-loving algae.

    Get roasted by your own forecastFree, no account, and you pick how rude I get.

    Signs of a heliophile

    • Every grey day gets taken personally.
    • Sunset times are known off by heart.
    • The weather widget shows the city with the best sky, not the home one.
    • A cloudy weekend counts as a waste of a weekend.

    Where the word comes from

    From Greek helios, the sun, by way of heli-, plus -phile, lover.

    By the numbers

    The clearest sky we track is over Tucson, clear or nearly clear about 84% of the time.

    How cloudy Tucson gets

    What I think

    • Heliophile: someone who takes every passing cloud personally.
    • Heliophiles do not have a favourite season. They have a favourite angle of the sun.
    • A heliophile in November is mostly waiting.

    More weather lovers and haters

    Sources: Merriam-Webster, heliophile. Sky cover: NOAA hourly normals, 1991 to 2020.

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