303 HOURS OF SUNSHINE.

There is much to do in Arizona's winter playground, where a kind sun dispels fear of wintry blasts and snows. This scene was taken last winter during the rodeo out Wickenburg Way. Wickenburg is the center of a winter ranch paradise where people from all over the world come to enjoy the warmth and hospitality of Arizona winter sunshine.

The sun is shining today in Arizona, over the flowered desert and fertile fields of America's brightest and sunniest region. And nearly every day this winter it will shine, pouring down rays of luxuriant warmth.

This month in Southern Arizona there will be everlasting sunny days, long hours when a cobalt sky will be the only covering of the picturesque winter playground.

There were 303 hours of sunshine in Phoenix during January, 1934. The sun shone more than 95 per cent of the hours it was above the horizon, and ten years before, in 1924, there were 316.6 hours of sunshine out of 318 possible. It is customary for winter months to have more than 250 hours of nature-warmed out-of-doors while elsewhere in the nation there is snow and ice. In 303 hours any bare skin-no matter how fair can acquire a rich tan.

Arizona's winter sunshine soaks in deeply. It penetrates, invigorating and rerejuvenating, through the coolest skin. Here, sunshine is not the ordinary sunshine of an ordinary place. In Arizona the sun's rays live. They come with a God-given blessing to a winter wonderland.

When sunshine comes down out of the Arizona sky, through a ceiling seldom overcast, it comes pure and unadulterated. It does not struggle through clouds and no smoke violates its purity. Sunshine comes onto Arizona's desert and cities as it left the distant ether, clear and bright.

Humidity is low in Arizona, and consequently, the air and sunshine are free from damp currents that would deter from clarity and translucence. There is no fog in Southern Arizona.

The average relative humidity of Tucson and Phoenix, two principal Southern Arizona winter resorts, is only 40, far below national average, and on warm afternoons the humidity often drops below 10. During winter months, warm air and the absence of an appreciable amount of rainfall induces low humidity.

And humidity, in terms of sunshine and bare skin, is important. To illustrate: It is the high humidity over large bodies of water not alone the reflected sunshine-which brings about excessive sunburn. Too, high temperatures in a dry region cause less skin irritation.

Such, at least, is the manner of Arizona sunshine.

Piercing through dry air and onto even tenderest skins, it bathes the out-of-doors habitue in a warm aurora, tanning skin a golden brown It penetrates deeply without causing inflammation in excess.

Something else contributes substantially to the pleasant aspect of Arizona winter, and that is an almost total ab sence of winds. While fragrant zephyrs whisper through the desert from the warm Gulf of California and Mexico, it is a gentle wind, usually of not more than five or seven miles intensity. Strong, destructive winds are practically un known.

There is little interruption of sunshine by storms and rainfall in Southern Ari zona. The state is noted for dryness.

The average annual rainfall for the area of Tucson is only 11.51 inches; of Phoenix, 7.90 inches; and Yuma, at an altitude of 140 feet above sea level, 3.10 inches. None of these resorts has a rainy season. The little rain that falls is scattered. Winter rains are gentle and warm, continuing never more than two or three days.

Mid-winter temperatures in Southern Arizona leave nothing to be desired in the interests of comfort. At Tucson the all-time mean is 66.7 degrees, at Phoenix it is 69.7, and at Yuma, 71.7 degrees It is not usual that a temperature of 79 (see below) is recorded in mid-winter, and the mid-day winter readings very seldom fall below 60 degrees.

A comparison of annual temperatures reveals that Phoenix has a similar mean temperature to Miami, Florida, and to Rio de Janeiro; Tucson is comparable with Mobile, Alabama; but if you like applications of the frigid, the extreme northern portion of Arizona, in the vast Kaibab Forest beyond the Grand Can yon, rivals the climate of Leningrad, Russia.

But, in sunshine itself, Arizona by far surpasses the other American winter resorts.

Phoenix reports an all-time sunshine average of 84.2 per cent; Tucson, 81.3 per cent; and Yuma, 89.7 per cent of the total possible sunshine.

During the winter months for the past three years the sunshine mean recorded at Phoenix has varied from 61 to 84 per cent, according to records of the U. S. Weather Bureau:

In January of 1934 the sun was shin ing in Phoenix 95 per cent of the day light hours, by far exceeding any other locality in the nation.

Arizona's warm daylight hours are accompanied by mild nights. In 1934 and 1936, only two temperatures below 32 degrees F. were recorded in Phoenix, and in 1935, only three. In 1937, due to the general storm of early January, there were 16 recordings below freezing, 15 of these in the one brief cold snap.

Southern Arizona has a higher sunshine ratio than any other winter resort area in the United States.