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Chasing the sun

Print | Comments () Posted by Beth Daley June 29, 2009 08:39 PM

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((AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

By Beth Daley
Globe Staff

My friend Polly called from Corinth, Vermont on Sunday: Was it sunny where I was? That would be a big no in Providence where I live. And no again a few hours later when I was driving into Hyannis.

She moved on, calling other friends, desperate to find where she could bask – even for a few minutes – in the sun’s warm rays.

Perseverance paid off. Polly found sun, briefly, in St. Johnsbury. And then, of course, the rain started falling.

Perhaps the most annoying part of this endless gray backdrop New England has been painted with is that, with little warning, the sun briefly appears. Tourists coming back from Martha’s Vineyard yesterday bragged they caught a few minutes of rays – as if ten minutes of sun was some sort of New England event that merits celebrating.

On Nantucket, where I worked yesterday, the sun poked through at 7:12 a.m. and then for the afternoon ferry ride back to the mainland – and even part of the drive back to Providence. Yet by 5:30 p.m. the rain started spitting.

“There are sunny breaks in all this but unfortunately sometimes you have to move states to find them…and they don’t last that long,’’ said Alan Dunham, National Weather Service meteorologist. He says the gray weather comes from a series of low pressure systems that is holding moisture over us. The sun comes from periodic breaks in that system.

He cautions against sun chasing.

“You can be in Boston and you just heard it’s sunny in Springfield but by the time you get there, it’s cloudy again.”

Where have you seen the sun? Are you desperate enough to chase it?

tags chase, gray, new england, sun, weather