We introduce a numerical scale to quantify to which extent a planar continuum is not locally connected. For a locally connected continuum, the numerical scale is zero; for a continuum like the topologist's sine curve, the scale is one; for an indecomposable continuum, it is infinite. We use a purely topological framework of fibers and further characterize the local connectedness of a planar continuum in terms of triviality of its fibers. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.