Frank Mirecki bounds up a set of stairs and on to a roof of an Environment Canada training facility in Richmond, grinning like a kid eager to show off a favourite toy.
With a flourish, he points to a spherical glass orb that's burning a hole in a long sheet of narrow, green paper.
The glass orb is called the Campbell-Stokes recorder, and though it hasn't changed much since its invention in 1853, it's a top tool used by Environment Canada to measure the hours of bright sunlight each day.
"It looks rather simplistic, but it runs rain or shine, and without power," Mirecki, the acting manager of atmospheric monitoring for Environment Canada's Pacific-Yukon region, said Thursday.
It also has the data to show that, despite the constant grousing about cold and cloudy days, the past 30 days have, in fact, been almost as sunny as the average summer.
Meteorological data show that we've seen only about 13 per cent fewer hours of bright sunlight than normal since summer officially began on June 21. So why all the grumbling?
Mirecki shrugs. "People typically fixate on the negative," he said.
In an era of space-age technology that measures and models meteorological data on computers, the Campbell-Stokes is a throwback to an earlier age.
Do you remember chasing ants around with a magnifying glass?" Mirecki said. "This instrument works pretty much the same way."
As the sun charts overhead, its light is magnified and focused by the globe. The beam burns or scorches the paper, marking both the time and intensity of sunlight. With a little math and a special measuring tool, Mirecki can then show how many hours the sun was out.
In June, for example, the recorder at the Vancouver airport counted 223.5 hours of sunshine - 97.6 per cent of the normal 229.1 hours.
All in all, it's been a pretty average summer, David Jones of Environment Canada said.
"Junes can be spectacular and they can also be horrible. So you take the average of spectacular and horrible and you get right in the middle. This June fits the average," Jones said.
