Melissa Elkins

The Pacific Northwest: home to towering trees, majestic mountains, beautiful islands…and a lot of cloudy days. In 2013, city-data.com ranked Bellingham, Wash., as the city of over 50,000 people in the lower 48 states with the lowest number of sunny days. On average, it is sunny roughly 35 percent of the year—a good indication of why there are so many direct flights from Bellingham to various Hawaiian islands in the winter months.