I saw this article in the UT and I had to save it. The weather has been odd here but still so much nicer than Lehi so we are not complaining!
Karla Peterson from the Union Tribune Oct 30 2010:
To San Diegans, this year’s crazy weather has been anything but fair
In honor of Halloween, San Diego might spend the next week or so disguised as its old sunny self. It’s OK if you don’t recognize it right away. It’s been awhile.
There is a possibility of some showers through today, but after that, San Diego is supposed to be seasonably warm and dry for a while, a big-time treat after a tricky weather year that has been wild, woolly and in the eyes of many disgruntled locals, just plain wrong.
“We assume weather isn’t something that you have to consider here,” said Pat Abbott, professor emeritus at SDSU’s department of geological sciences. “If the temperature is two degrees off, people are complaining about it, like every day is supposed to be a carbon copy of the day before.”
It’s true that San Diegans are weather wimps who get pushed out of shape when the elements force us to put on long pants and socks. But it is also true that 2010 brought us hail in April. And four times our normal rainfall in October. And our coolest summer since 1933. This doesn’t make us the North Pole (or even San Francisco), but as my gym friend Sheri Falke reminded me over many early-morning blow-drying conversations this year, it wasn’t what we signed up for at all.
“The gloom has affected me,” said Falke, an insurance specialist who works in Mission Valley and lives in Point Loma. “When we don’t have the sunshine, it affects your emotional state. I didn’t realize it until September, when it was nice for a couple of days and then it went back to being cloudy, and I kept thinking how I wanted those nice days back.”
With all due respect to Professor Abbott, San Diegans do consider the weather. We consider it to be one of the few things San Diego does reliably well. We can’t depend on affordable housing or plentiful jobs, but we can usually count on our weather to make us the envy of our Midwestern friends and East Coast relatives. And if we can’t be the feel-good capital of the meteorological world, we don’t feel good about ourselves.
“People here expect to have nice weather a good percentage of the time,” said Dan Atkin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Diego and a local resident for 27 years. “They have paid their sunshine tax, and they demand sunny, fair weather.”
Actually, what we demand is no more than what we have come to expect, which is the right kind of fair weather at the appointed time. And since Mother Nature has apparently been too busy wreaking havoc on the rest of the world to keep us on our comfort track, here is a refresher course on how San Diego’s four seasons are supposed to work. May the flip-flop force be with us once again.
FALL (Baby, it’s warmish outside.)
With its sweatshirt-worthy mornings and blanket-friendly nights, the ideal San Diego fall is cool enough for the festive quaffing of hot apple cider but warm enough to allow for shorts in downtown Julian. Sadly, the Santa Ana conditions that make the fall so pleasant can also make it too hot and wildfire-ready for comfort. But when the temperatures are on our side, our woodland friends can rest easy and we can almost fool ourselves into thinking it’s time to buy a new sweater.
WINTER (The Green-With-Envy Season)
Some precipitation is nice in December, but not so much that Fashion Valley floods during holiday-shopping time. Once we have wowed the Holiday Bowl crowd with our dazzling December and gathered the family for a nice New Year’s Day walk on the beach, the rains can begin. Because if there is anything we hate more than wearing socks, it’s conserving water.
SPRING (In like a lamb, out like an invisible lamb.)
If San Diego’s winter cooperates, spring means a damp Saturday morning stocking up on pretty new plants, followed by a breezy Sunday photographing wildflowers in the Anza-Borrego Desert, followed by some solid weeks of weather-related gloating.
SUMMER: (The only season you’ll ever need.)
The sun comes out in mid-June, banishing May gray and reminding us why we sacrifice paychecks and Super Bowl rings to live here. We bask in our seasonal glory until September, when we start complaining about brown lawns and stratospheric air-conditioning bills. But quietly, so Arizona can’t hear us.
