[mike2niner4 (OP)]

Michael Perry asked the Naked Scientists:
   
I'm wondering where is the sunniest place in England, if there is one?

Love the show! [nofollow]

Michael Perry, Cheshire

What do you think?

[SkepticSam]

You can find the sunniest place yesterday here: Current obs

The 30 year average temperatures and other records here: Climate Averages. Just make your selection from the left hand column.

Uk Weather records can be found here: UK Weather Records

and historical data from here: Historic station data

[Don_1]

Bermuda [] ROTFL

Or perhaps a tanning salon somewhere in Essex.

[DoctorBeaver]

Residents of East Anglia claim that to be the sunniest & driest area of the UK. Whether that is actually true or not, I cannot say. However, when I lived there we often had dry, sunny weather when the rest of the country was overcast or had rain. There were many occasions when neighbouring counties had rain or snow yet we had none. I remember on 1 particular occasion Colchester had a few inches of snow while we, a mere 14 miles north in Suffolk, had none at all.

Certainly the north east of England gets far less rain that the north west (holiday makers take note - Scarborough is drier than Blackpool). I believe that is due to the west having hills & mountains in north Wales & the Lake District whereas the north east has none and is shielded from most rain-laden weather systems by The Penines. I do not, though, know how the north east compares to East Anglia.

However, I have also heard that The Scilly Isles is the sunniest place.

[SkepticSam]

DoctorBeaver.

What you are noticing is the effect of cloud. I know that seems obvious and a silly thing to say but the reason why those (northern) inland areas are duller is because of summer convective clouds. On the whole, the sunniest areas of the UK arevalong the south coast. The town of Eastbourne is credited with the sunniest month, 383.9 hours of sunshine in July 1911. the town with the highest yearly average of sunshine is St Hellier. Averaging 1915 hours of sunshine a year.