LANSING — Do you know where your sunglasses have been hiding? It’s been awhile since they have been needed, so it’s understandable if you can’t find them.

Thankfully, the sun is making a comeback after a more-dreary-than-usual January. The sun was out so seldom it tied for the second darkest first month of the year in the last 100 years.

Michigan, one of the darkest states, has what is either the only, or one of only a few, public sunshine sensors in the nation, which tracks sunlight.

Here’s how meteorologists track sunlight and what we know about Michigan’s winter history with the sun since 1903.

How do we know it’s been dark?

The photoelectric sensor is at the Grand Rapids National Weather Service station, and it found that only about 8% of the daylight hours had sunshine in January. It’s normally around 22%.

The sunshine sensor reads data for Grand Rapids, which tends to get more lake effect that can boost clouds and keep a weaker winter sun at bay, he said. But it’s the only such mechanism in place in the state.

The current sensor has been used since the 1950s but an earlier version tracked sunshine as early as 1903.

In that century of data, only 1998, with 6% sun, was darker than January 2024. Januarys in 2003 and 2004 were just as dark at 8%.

Other winter months have been dim. Two Decembers, in 1987 and 2002, also had 8% sun. Only one February, in 2004, dipped below 10% sunshine and that was 7%.

But February is usually a brighter month and the state should expect to be seeing the sun more often, although it will be coming and going until April or May, said Nathan Jeruzal, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

What about Lansing’s sunshine?

In the Lansing area, a proxy for a sunshine sensor is cloud cover, said Rob Dale, deputy emergency manager for Ingham County and a meteorologist.

He said about 27 of the month’s 31 days had cloud cover, or about 87%.

“There were no totally sunny days,” Dale said.

Muskegon had no days of partial cloudy conditions (between 40% and 80% cloud cover, which can include nighttime) in January, according to the National Weather Service. Jackson had one sunny day and six partially cloudy days; Lansing had four partially cloudy days and no sunny days.

Dale said the clouds helped to keep the month as a whole warm, even accounting for a brutal cold snap that dumped the most significant cold yet this season.

The average temperature for the month was a high of 30 and a low of 22, or roughly the normal high and about 5 degrees warmer than the normal low, according to National Weather Service records.

“Most mornings were not too cold and the days weren’t too hot,” Dale said.

So about those sunglasses?

It’s probably a good idea to find those sunglasses, as there’s more sun in the next several days of the forecast than there were in all of January.

On Friday, Feb. 2, the most famous groundhog did not see its shadow in Pennsylvania. For the groundhog, that traditionally means an earlier end to the worst of winter. However, Woody the Woodchuck, a Howell-based annual fixture, did, so it’s up in the air whether Michigan sees six more weeks of winter.

For Groundhog Day, the sensor in Grand Rapids saw 45% of the possible sun.

That sun, Jeruzal said, is expected to stick around for the first part of the work week before going back to colder temperatures and with precipitation possible.

“We will be increasing sunshine, little by little, toward spring, he said. “We are expecting a decent amount of sun through Wednesday and clouds should increase around Thursday ahead of the next system. Then we should get a cloudy period for the later portion of next week into next weekend.”

For the rest of the month, Jeruzal said, in general people should expect to see a cooling off in the later part of February with more chances of lake effect and clouds at the end of the month than in this first week.

The temperatures are expected to be in the low-40s as a high and the mid-20s as a low until Wednesday, when the high gets up to 47 degrees.

See a full forecast here.

Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: January in Michigan was one of the darkest in the last 100 years. Here’s why