The major cities in United States with the most sun year round are Phoenix and Las Vegas. Both are sunny for 85 percent of the time between sunrise and sunset, amounting to over 3800 hours a year.

It gets even sunnier during July and August in Sacramento, California.

At Sacramento the sun shines 96% of the time and all but nine days in those two summer months have mainly clear skies. During winter though, clouds move in and Sacramento sees sun for less than half of the daylight hours.

Meanwhile on the California coast, the pattern reverses. San Diego, another of the top-ranking US cities for sunshine, gets more sun in winter than in summer.

The major cities included in the weather rankings represent the metropolitan areas in the United States with over one million people in 2010. Sunshine and cloud cover information are not available from the National Climatic Data Center for San Jose and Riverside California, so they were left out of the sunniest city ratings.

Average annual sunshine in the sunniest major US cities. City % Sunshine Hours of Sun Clear Days Phoenix, Arizona 85 3872 211 Las Vegas, Nevada 85 3825 210 Sacramento, California 78 3608 188 Los Angeles, California 73 – 147 Miami, Florida 70 3154 74 Denver, Colorado 69 3107 115 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 68 3089 139 San Diego, California 68 3055 146 Salt Lake City, Utah 66 3029 125 San Francisco, California 66 – 160 Tampa, Florida 66 2927 101

% sunshine is the percentage of time between sunrise and sunset that sun reaches the earth's surface. Clear days is the number days a year when clouds cover less than one-third of the sky on average.