www.currentresults.com/W...

sunniest doesn't necessarily equate to hottest

obviously not, but I can't figure out why exactly. All that solar energy/heat ought to be closely related to temperature, I would think

and Sacramento is in a valley, trapping heat, so although geography has to have something to do with it, I can't figure out how it helps. I need a geologist to explain this to me

Sacramento is neither close to the equator nor close to the ocean, nor is the air near it particularly humid. The valley it's in is extremely large, so it doesn't trap much heat at all (plenty of wind).

Areas closer to the equator get more constant radiant sun. Also, water has a much lower heat capacity than land. During the day, the land gets warmer than the water, but the water holds its heat better

(and there's a whole lot more of it), so at night the land dumps all its heat into the air and the ocean doesn't dump nearly as much. This pattern creates sea breezes, trade winds, jet streams, etc. On the

Pacific coast, our jet stream comes down from Alaska, so our air is colder and drier and our water is freezing. On the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream brings water up the coast from the Caribbean, so the air is much

warmer and humid, and the ocean is about the temperature of a nice bath in mid-summer. The humidity (which we don't have) also holds a lot of heat in the air, so Florida is much more miserable in the summer

Ask and ye shall receive

than, say, Vegas, even though the temperatures in Vegas are technically higher -- in Florida, you add in the humidity to create the heat index.

I didn't realize humidity held in heat. I thought it just increased your perception of heat by preventing sweat from evaporating and cooling you off. So really a lot of reasons we can get so much more sun

and not heat up as much then. Thank you.

So, while Sacramento may be the sunniest place and Death Valley is always the hottest place in the US, the warmest places in the US (year-round average temperatures) are always in

Florida and Hawaii.

I wish I knew why so many people around here are against solar panels. It would seem this would be an ideal place for them

ug, that list of "number of days above 99" is just horrifying. When we have 10 or 15 days straight over that temp I'm losing my mind