Legion of Gloom: Dark days ahead with relentless stormy stretch across Seattle area

Hello darkness our old friend….

It’s been well advertised that the weather pattern is going to be quite stormy over the next week around Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. There’s been talk of heavy rains and potential risks of river flooding and landslides that’s been well covered in other posts.

While for many in the populated urban core areas, rain storms like this don’t usually have much impact beyond just like local roads with massive puddles or other minor issues; most of the dangers are in river plains and near landslide risks. But there’s a part of this week that DOES affect quite a few people — even in the city — with these kind of storms:

Darkness.

Historically, our days with the least amount of sunlight energy come in late November into December when we’ve got the double disadvantage of short periods of daylight and powerful storms that feature thick cloud layers.

Thursday morning, the cloud base was only 400-1,000 feet off the ground at many locations and the weather balloons launched in Forks showed saturated air and likely cloud cover several miles thick.That makes for one big sunshine filter!

Anyone know if there was a Sunrise today? I can’t tell. #wawx pic.twitter.com/GEuPpCg9Qm

— Tim Long (@TimLong350) December 4, 2025

On the gloomiest days this century — record is currently Dec. 20, 2019, according to UW Atmospheric Sciences Research Professor Mark Albright — Seattle receives about 70 times less total sunlight energy than a crystal clear sunny day in July.

Also to compare, Albright said one of the gloomiest days in Tucson, Arizona’s history — a day it even snowed there! — was still 10 times brighter than Seattle’s darkest day.

While the next 7 days won’t be a total, non-stop run of gloom — Saturday shows some promise of some breaks in the clouds, and there are other times between storms it should look relatively brighter — those who are sensitive to the gloom should be ready for a week of challenges ahead, especially mid-week as those storms look stronger and, in turn, likely darker.

Those of you who are sensitive to the gloom, I’d love to open up the comments below or there’s a larger discussion going on on my Facebook page to share your tips to maybe help others who struggle, especially for maybe those who are new to the area and this may be their first go-round with an extended Northwest rainy/gloomy stretch.