Despite gloom, cloudy record out of reach at Blue Hill

By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

Despite inches of rain and all those overcast afternoons, gloomy mornings, and cloudy lunch breaks, this June will not set a record for a shortage of sunshine.

Even if not another ray of sunlight reaches the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory and Science Center in Milton before the end of the month, it will not matter. It is now mathematically impossible to break the all-time record set in 1903, when just 25 percent of the sun’s rays penetrated the clouds.

The lowest this June can go with one last good, gloomy day is 26 percent, one percentage point short of making history. That is disappointing for Robert Skilling, the chief observer at Blue Hill, who had been rooting for a new record.

"We're in solid possession of second place," said Skilling, finding his own silver lining when the sun poked through the clouds this afternoon at the Blue Hill Observatory, where a glass sphere on the roof has recorded nearly every burst of sunshine since 1885.

This month will shatter the previous mark for the second-cloudiest June on record in 1998, when only 36 percent of the sun's rays reached the earth. That in itself, Skilling acknowledged, is an accomplishment.

"We never suspected," he said, "that this would stay this low."