After luxuriating in the warmest January of all time, you just knew some sort of karmic, weather-related debt would come due for Seattle later in the year. Sure enough, it has: according to a University of Washington researcher who studies such things, this is the gloomiest, most cloud-covered summer since we started keeping these sorts of depressing measurements in 1951.”Things are really quite unusual,” UW’s Jim Johnstone told The Seattle Times.Using lasers and other high-tech gobbledygook, Johnson has determined that Seattle has experienced three times the average amount of low clouds and fog.Since July 10, the data paint an even glummer picture: nine hours a day of low cloud cover, compared to the seasonal average of 1.6 hours.FROWN FACE.Of course, the natural reaction to this crappy news (besides self-pity) is to find Seattle Weekly cover-boy Cliff Mass and ask him just what in the hell is going on. (And ask him to use the small words so we can understand.)”The most important thing is that we have stronger than normal high pressure over the eastern Pacific,” says Mass. “So that is really enhancing the push of cool air all over the West Coast.” Mass also said something about “disturbances from the north,” but I just heard “disturbances in the force” and completely lost track of what he was saying to a Star Wars-related daydream. Until, that is, he talked about people who were having an even worse summer than us Seattleites.”Along the coast it’s been abysmal,” he says. “Foggy low clouds every day. It’s amazingly bad.”Rejoice! Someone else is suffering more!