California Weather...Fog, Yes...But Compared to Elsewhere

Today was one of those days. I was driving down (or would it be up?) International Boulevard early Sunday afternoon towards Lake Merritt, and…

It was raining, but not cold, and bright
My wipers were on
My defogger was on
My headlights were on
My window was open
I was wearing my sunglasses

(Does that count as a poem? Have I inadvertently committed an act of poetry? Yeesh!)

Having grown up in the Northeast, I don't miss the weather there at all — at all — or the weather of the East Coast generally (with one exception). I don't mean to say it's better or worse; it is fair to say that there is little to compare with a sunny spring or autumn in New York (City and upstate) the day after a rain, with the sunlight reflecting off the water, or New England when the trees change colors. That one, if you time it right, if up there for visual magnificence with anything we have out here. 

But you'll notice I didn't mention mid-summer or mid-winter.

I like to say that if carrying a jacket around with me all the time is the price to pay for never having to see snow (unless I want to), I'll take that deal gladly.

I attended college in a small town way upstate New York, right up against the St. Lawrence River. Potsdam would get an average of 180 inches of snow each winter. That's 15 feet. Of snow.

They had this really strange device that they'd send out two or three times each winter, that would go through the parking lots and sort of chop down into the hard-packed snow and ice that had accumulated over the prior month or two. (The streets were clear, of course; this is an area that knows what to do in a snowfall.) They would cart away these huge foot-plus-thick chunks of ice, in which you could see alternating strata of grime and clean snow, marking the major snowfalls since the last lot-chopping.

To be fair, that packed ice was a lot of fun, if the lot was otherwise empty, on which to spin one's VW bug in 360s and 540s and sometimes just a little bit further.

Every winter had periods when the temperature never got above zero for a week or above freezing for a month. When the temperature has been that cold for a couple months, and then one March day the sun's really shining and it gets all the way into the high 20s, you might actually not take your coat if you're just going across the quad; after all, you'll only be outside for a minute.

We'd learn that when the temperature's been below zero for a week, and then in a few hours overnight it gets 20° warmer (y'know, up into the low teens), watch out, it's gonna snow. (It can actually be too cold to snow.) Sunrise in mid-December was 8:45 a.m., sunset 3:20 p.m. Four winters like that. So, y'know, I figure I did my time. 

One Saturday afternoon a few years ago, during a particularly cold winter (2005? 2006?), I was meeting my buddy Skip and his girlfriend for a matinee at the gorgeous-but-not-as-gorgeous-as-the-Alameda Orinda Theater.

The theater has a small plaza just outside, with a fountain, maybe six feet across. And because it was winter, and the sun was at its lowest, the fountain had been in the shade all morning after a freezing overnight. So it was frozen over. And there were people there with two- and three-year-olds and thereabouts, and they were showing these kids the ice, how you could put something on it, but how it broke if you hit it, and then you could pick it up… It was a novelty! Look, honey, ice! I thought it was hilarious. 

I've become a real weather wuss since moving out here, I must admit. Putting aside for the moment all the other reasons I hate south Florida, it's just horribly hot. But the whole east is like that in the summer, even up in the mountains. (The Appalachians are not all that high, it can be argued, although I think it's poor form to point at them and laugh as some Coloradans do.) It's hot and sticky and humid and icky and the mosquitos are the size of a DC-3. The beach areas around the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay celebrate them with T-shirts ("Chincoteague National Bird","I Gave Blood at Assoteague Island"), that's how big these airborne flechettes are. If you've never been there, trust me, that's one of the best things about living around here. Yeah, we have mosquitos, but these out here are High School ball compared to the big leagues back East. Those guys laugh and point at our mosquitos.

The one saving grace of East Coast summers is the summer thunderstorm. For a couple of weeks in July (-ish), a typical afternoon gets hotter and humider and more intolerable, until, about 5 p.m. or so, the clouds get so thick that the sky gets dark. I don't mean dim, I mean dark. And then it breaks open, and the lightning and thunder start, and the rain comes down in unbelievable quantities.

If you're driving, you have to pull over until the worst passes. And we're talking real lightning storms; we get them around here, yeah, but sometimes it's difficult to tell if it's thunder, or the fireworks at the ballpark. When you're driving your cab down W. 10th St. in Manhattan and a bolt hits the cornice of the building 100 feet in front of you, however, it gets pretty obvious. We get some seriously soaking rains, to be sure (when we're lucky), and they get some nasty storms in the Valley, but I think you have to go to the plains states, where you can see storms 50 miles away, to compare. It's as unique an experience as an aurora. Price is a bit high, tho, I gotta admit.

They last about a half-hour, and then afterwards, the air smells as fresh as you could ever want air to smell, and the evening begs you to come out on the porch, or the front steps, or to walk along the pond in the park — especially once the sun's gone down and the mosquitos have receded (whence came the screened-in porch). 

And given the choice, I'll take an earthquake-prone area over one subject to floods, or tornados, or hurricanes. Floods take weeks to come in and recede. Hurricanes also seem to last forever; people freak out for three days while it's coming, then it takes three days to go through, and three more days before you can come home and start cleaning up. And tornados are just so random and chaotic — one side of the street gets destroyed, the other side is untouched, for example. It's annoying. And stressful.

Around these here parts, you get as prepared as you can, but when (and remember, it's not "if") one hits, there's no long, drawn-out approach — thus no extra anxiety. It hits, and it's essentially over in a minute or so. So we can pick ourselves up off the sidewalks and pretty much start cleaning up (and attending to the fires) right away. Like I said, I'll take that deal.