Download Sunshine Winter
Amancio Mccrae
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The eastern Mediterranean Sea around Cyprus may be chilly in winter, but the island gets plenty of sunshine all year, so there's a good chance you'll get T-shirt weather even in the coldest months. From March, the island's flowers start to bloom, and there's barely another visitor in sight. It's a great option for families too as it's only a short hop from the UK and there are plenty of child-friendly hotels once you're there.
For year-round sunshine, spotless beaches and impeccable service a short hop away, Dubai is an obvious choice. The Palm, a manmade sweep of beach packed with superb hotels, each with its own immaculate patch of beach, is perfect for family holidays. It's not all glass and shopping malls in Downtown Dubai: the Old Souk is a warren of glittering jewellery and pots, and the peaceful Dubai Creek hints at a time before the seven-star hotels and indoor ski slopes. Two new creative districts (Dubai Design District and Al Quoz) have gained the attention of the international art scene, too. To see the city in its best light, go in November, when it's not too humid and you can happily bronze by the pool all day.
Adrift in the Indian Ocean, a thousand miles from the nearest coast of Africa, the Seychelles are the ultimate fantasy-island escape. The archipelago has year-round heat and sunshine, as well as its fair share of rain. The wettest months in the Seychelles are November to March, but temperatures never get too oppressively hot (meandering around 24ºC at night and up to 29ºC in the daytime, year round). October is a great month to go for a hit of sunshine, before it gets too rainy, and the air is fresher.
'The Golden State' is an appropriate nickname; California is one of the sunniest of US states, with mild winters, little rain and plenty of sunshine, especially in the south. For a classic USA road trip, hire a convertible and hit the Pacific Coast road. State Route 1 runs 550 miles from Leggett all the way down to Malibu. It has famously beautiful views much of the way, and the best section is that from San Francisco through Monterey and San Simeon to San Luis Obispo (where the road drifts inland), although north of San Francisco the route is wilder and less crowded. Aim to drive southwards, to be closer to the sea.
Flight time: One full day from the UK
When to go: Year-round (though March is particularly rainy on Tahiti).
Average winter temperature: 28C
In both geography and spirit, just about as far from a drizzly British winter as you can get. French Polynesia is made up of 100-odd little islands in the South Pacific Ocean, the best-known of them Tahiti and Bora Bora. They are out of this world. Castaway fantasy, ringed by reefs; the water unbelievable shades of turquoise blue; the hibiscus flowers Gauguin bright; everything bright and light and hyper-real.
Let me start by saying that I am not here to complain. As far as New England winters go, this one has been downright mild with just a little snow and plenty of days in the 40s (basically tropical if you ask me!).
But one thing I have been missing? The sun. Though it hasn't been overly freezing cold or wintry here in Boston, it's been freaking gloomy. And since I don't have the power to make the sun come out myself, I've been trying to bring it back into my life with the food I'm eating. Hence this sunshine winter citrus salad.
Whenever I feel down in the winter, I try to come up with a list of things I like about it... And there are actually quite a few! I love hot coffee and tea and comfy sweatshirts and fireplaces and I even love my winter boots. But mostly? I love winter citrus.
Not only is it delicious, but it loads me up with vitamin C and keeps cold weather illnesses far, far away. This winter citrus salad lets me indulge in multiple forms at once, plus lots of other wintry goodies!
This sunshine winter citrus salad makes my gloomy wintry weather heart happy. Eating it, of course, but also just looking at these photos. A few cold, sun-free months are totally worth it for the joys of winter citrus. OK, maybe the sun could still manage to appear every now and then.
The Winter Sun cocktail is just that, a dose of sunshine in your glass! And who can deny it with a color like that? A mix of blood orange and Aperol give it a rich and intense orange hue that just begs to be sipped on. Get rid of that those mid-winter blues with a punch of orange!
"I've been to five of his concerts now. Loving the New England weather, you're loving his songs too, it's a little sad and depressing here," said Jackie Balch, a native New Englander toughing it out in the winter months. "I wish it wasn't always this cloudy out. This isn't super motivating weather to be outdoors."
"It's very common, we see it a lot. It usually lasts about four to five months of the year," said Alexandra Gold, a clinical psychologist at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School. "People do experience low mood in the winter months. There's less sunlight, the days are shorter, temperatures are colder."
The English tongue has never been accused of being deficient in its collection of synonyms and near synonyms. It often appears that the language decided (if languages can decide things, which they cannot) that if it was good to have one word for a thing then having a half dozen must be better. And so we find ourselves with a large number of words having to do with describing winter. If you are tired of describing things as wintry, you can instead say that they are hiemal, hibernal, winterish, or brumal.
Brumation is the creation of the American zoologist Wilbur W. Mayhew, who coined in a 1965 paper on the hibernation of the Horned Lizard, as he thought there needed to be a term that distinguished between the wintertime habits of cold and warm-blooded animals. There is, as best we can tell, no independent word to describe the winter sluggishness and inactivity of people.
Some people find that knowing a word for a certain thing makes them pay it greater attention. Chances are very high that, after having slogged through the cold and gloom of several months of winter, you will not need to be reminded that spring is just around the corner; in the event you are the sort of person who overlooks the slight warmth of a breeze foreshadowing the end of winter, or misses the crocuses beginning to flower, it may be handy to carry around with you a word for the beginning of this new season.
Out of desperation he'd head up into the mountains above the clouds and ski in the sunshine. After an hour or two he'd start feeling better. He attributed it to the change of scenery, getting himself out of the classroom and away from the work routine.
But unlike major depression, it occurs seasonally, usually beginning in September or October and lasting through March or April. Someone who has suffered these symptoms for two consecutive winters, but does not have symptoms of depression during the spring and summer months, probably has seasonal affective disorder.
The exact cause of seasonal affective disorder is not yet understood, but the role of the neurotransmitter serotonin is one of the "most promising" areas of research, according to Rosenthal. The body uses serotonin in manufacturing melatonin, the chemical that makes us sleepy. Concentrations of serotonin drop to their lowest levels during the winter and rise to their highest levels in summer and fall.
Although the causes of seasonal affective disorder are not clearly understood, the cure is fairly straightforward: more light during the winter months. In severe cases, people with seasonal affective disorder may also benefit from antidepressant medications, says Mark Levy, MD, chairman of the San Francisco Foundation for Psychoanalysis.
For those with mild cases, 30 minutes of exercise in the morning sun may be all that is needed to keep the winter blues at bay, says Levy. People with more severe symptoms should consult a physician, preferably one who's experienced in treating seasonal affective disorder.
Valley View offers a gorgeous vista of vineyards, rustic barns and the Siskiyou Mountains, best viewed from the lawn or tasting room, where rays of sunshine enter its high windows and heat the dark concrete floor. Warming up with a rich, ripe bottle of barbera will help as well.
Quady North offers a guided five-tasting flight. It suggests celebrating sunny winter days with a sparkling brut. Pair it with an Oregon Cheese Cave charcuterie plate. Reservations are strongly recommended.
Because this vitamin can be obtained from sunlight, our vitamin D levels are impacted during winter in the Northeast. The shorter hours of sunlight and cold weather makes it challenging for us to stand outside in the sun in short sleeved shirts.
The tables below pull together numbers on the amount of sunshine that each US state usually has during winter. There's information by state on the season's averages for percent, hours and days of sun.
The % Sun number measures the percentage of time between sunrise and sunset that sunshine reaches the ground. Total Hours is the average number of sunny hours a place normally has in winter. Clear Days is the average number of days in winter when cloud covers at most 30 percent of the sky during daylight hours.
Since so few weather stations measure sunshine, meaningful state-wide averages aren't available. Instead, the tables list a place for each state that represents the state's typical amount of sunshine.
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