I counted 158 beautiful days in 2015. The National Weather Service people don’t have their breakdown yet, but their annual average of that kind of day in Pittsburgh always hovers around 59.

The difference between their count and mine includes those days when puffy cumulus clouds float high over baseball games, picnics, cookouts, fall foliage hikes, trail rides and canoe trips. Those clouds are partly to blame for the bad weather rap Pittsburgh gets.

Every year since 2007, every day, I have recorded the weather as I see it, using a wildlife calendar and subjective remarks the National Weather Service is not given to.

“We never come out and say good day or bad day,” said Lee Hendricks, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pittsburgh who helped me understand how he and his colleagues come to the conclusions they report.

You can depend on scientists for precision based on formulas that standardize reporting. The National Weather Service uses a system that bases the year’s statistics on mean cloudiness from sunrise to sunset — 1/​8 being mostly clear, 8/​8 being thoroughly cloudy.

Days with any clouds are measured on this scale, so all those beautiful days with high clouds are part of the yearly average — 6/​8 mean cloudiness — that wrongly has defined Pittsburgh’s reputation as dreary. (A century of pollution didn’t help.)

Meteorologists don’t draw smiley faces or four exclamation points on a calendar square as I did on July 11 — and many days last year — when it was GLORIOUS!! in the mid-80s. I take pride in recording accurate details whether I am giddy or grouchy, which is most of February. When away from Pittsburgh, I check the local weather on my iPhone.

In a Post-Gazette Next Page feature from January 2007, Brett Yasko, my inspiration for keeping daily weather results, wrote that when he read, sometime in 2005, that Pittsburgh has 59 clear days, he was “flummoxed. Surely I’m missing something. I mean, this isn’t Miami Beach, but 59 sunny days a year?”

As a result of his disbelief, he began recording sunny days and counted 145 in 2006.

In the years since I read his article, I have found it oddly satisfying to chronicle the weather, to add editorial comment if the day merits it, to draw suns and raindrops. Each New Year’s day, I’ve tallied overall sunniness from the year before in the 150- to 160-day range. The standout year, 2012, had 181 beautiful days. That year, I wrote STELLAR! and “Another day in paradise” many times.

I marked 22 days last July alone in the category “beautiful.” August was right behind with 21. May and September each had 20. June was 19 days of rain and another six that weren’t sunny, but at least it was June.

February was when the polar vortex drove knives into 14 days and nights, fattening my “below 20F” category.

We had 114 days of thorough cloudiness, and many of those included 93 days in which I noted some rain. (There were a few sunny days in which it rained briefly.)

In a category I call “mixed,” I counted 97 days that went from several hours of pretty to several hours of bleh back to pretty, say at sunset, then maybe back to bleh at night. I’ll take a mixed day any day, and so would most people.

If you add those days to the beautiful category, more than half of any year in Pittsburgh would appeal to a lot of people who consider weather when looking to relocate.

It’s less and less necessary these days to rally to Pittsburgh’s defense over much of anything. We’re the most this, the most that, the best this, the best that in a growing pile of reports, and we finally hit the national radar on restaurant quality. But when it comes to weather, we still have to line up against our offenders.

If you understand the methods of the National Weather Service and National Climatic Data Center in sunny Asheville, N.C., which averages 212 days with sun, 99 of those BEAUTIFUL!!, then use the number “59” for Pittsburgh like a scientist. If you’re a regular Jane or Joe who knows what kind of day makes you say, “What a beautiful day!” count ’em yourself and stop perpetuating a false stereotype of our fair city.

Diana Nelson Jones is a Post-Gazette staff writer (djones@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1626).

First Published: January 16, 2016, 5:00 a.m.