The winters in Denmark are extremely dark, cloudy and depressing. The problem for me is not even the fact that the sun sets early, it’s that I don’t see the sun during the day for WEEKS. Please, explain why I must endure this dark, cloudy winter hellscape?
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Like much of the Atlantic coast, prevailing winds over Denmark are westerly, and so they blow humid air in from the sea. During winter the air over sea around these parts tends to be slightly warmer than over land, because of the gulf stream and, in early winter, because water takes a while to cool down. So particularly in December, you get relatively warm, humid air coming in, and then cooling down over land, which causes some of the humidity to condensate and form clouds.
(Also, in general when air that was hanging out over the sea gets pushed over land, it usually has to rise up as the land is higher, and when it rises to higher altitudes it also cools down. This is a bigger effect depending on how high up you live, or if you have mountains nearby. So not so much in Denmark.)
I myself live in the Netherlands which suffers from very similar weather patterns for the same reasons. I also lived in New York for a while and the difference was staggering. While winters are colder there, the more southernly latitude (comparable to Madrid or Lisbon) means days are longer, and also the prevailing wind in winter rarely comes from the direction of the Atlantic (which would be easterly, whereas winds are usually westerly or northerly), meaning lots of crisp, clear winter skies. It was great.
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