Satellite images show serious lack of sun in Ontario that’s been bumming everyone out

Parts of the GTA may be enjoying glimpses of the sun during these first days of the New Year, but the past few weeks have been largely dominated by miserably overcast skies that have served to drag down the general morale in and around Toronto.

Just like last winter, which boasted the greyest January in the region over a decade, it seems that cheerless conditions and a lack of sun are bumming people out — but new visuals from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are at least making residents feel more validated in their feelings.

A birds-eye timelapse of North America’s cloud cover over the course of December has accrued hundreds of comments on Ontario Reddit, where locals have used it to assure one another that they’re “not crazy” for feeling the impacts of this stint of gloomier-than-usual weather.

Some proof of how cloudy it’s been lately (no, you’re not crazy)

byu/HedgeKeeper inontario

The clip, compiled from more than 8,800 satellite snapshots from the NOAA, indeed shows that as a barrage of clouds swirled and moved around the continent, Ontario was among the places that remained the most stubbornly shrouded for pretty much the entire month.

“It’s amazing to see the continuous stream of clouds covering southern Ontario,” wrote the user who created the 2.5-minute montage. Others called it mesmerizing and agreed that it explains why the last few weeks have felt particularly “rough” in parts of the province.

A timelapse of satellite images showing the incredibly cloudy December we just had here in Ontario

byu/HedgeKeeper inontario

As one person wrote in a separate post just days before the footage was shared, “I’m starting to forget what the sun looks like in southern Ontario.”

Recent posts on X and other platforms echo the sentiment.

Fortunately, it looks like the city’s forecast as of Thursday afternoon calls for partly sunny skies in the days to come, with unobscured sun — albeit amid negative temperatures — by the week of January 13.