What beach town or coastal community receives the least amount of fog (San Diego: real estate)

[Geography101]

Just curious at the responses and which beach town has the most sunny days.

[Hawk J]

When i lived down thar, i would say San Diego...

[californio sur]

Most regions where the beach faces south and has a mountain range behind are the least foggy. Santa Cruz is a good example; also Avila Beach. The entire coastline of Santa Barbara south of Pt Conception, Malibu, Long Beach, Laguna Beach.

[MtnSurfer]

This is a question which you will get different answers/opinions on. So its best to look at the statistics. One place which is easy to check out the numbers is Yahoo real estate. Just enter in some beach areas in question. Based on a quick check my hometown of Hermosa Beach appears to have the most sunny days - 283. Whereas San Diego has 266. Pismo shows 282. Monterey, where we currently live has 267.

Some may question these numbers and insist San Diego has the most sunny days. But I think that SD is overrated in that regard. It has less rain (more arrid and consequently more fires) but a fair number of June gloom and cloudy days in relation to the rest of the Southern and Central Coast.

IMO and practical experience the differences are pretty minor between most SoCal beach communities. In other words you wouldn't really notice a big difference with regards to sunny days. The SoCal coast is the warmest. Although the Central Coast isn't that far behind with the exception of summer fog which is worse in some years vs others. Ocean water temps are however a different story. SoCal is significantly warmer.

As an old surfer who has traveled the state extensively in search of the perfect wave I have experienced both ocean and land temperatures up and down the coast. Although a bit cooler I prefer the Central Coast once one factors in all the other elements such as traffic, smog, population or over population, crime, wide open spaces vs, over development, more green, trees, natural beauty, etc...

There are many other factors which go in to making an area a better fit and hence provide a higher quality life even if sunny days are high on your list.

As always YMMV,

Derek

[californio sur]

Originally Posted by MtnSurfer

This is a question which you will get different answers/opinions on. So its best to look at the statistics. One place which is easy to check out the numbers is Yahoo real estate. Just enter in some beach areas in question. Based on a quick check my hometown of Hermosa Beach appears to have the most sunny days - 283. Whereas San Diego has 266. Pismo shows 282. Monterey, where we currently live has 267.

Some may question these numbers and insist San Diego has the most sunny days. But I think that SD is overrated in that regard. It has less rain (more arrid and consequently more fires) but a fair number of June gloom and cloudy days in relation to the rest of the Southern and Central Coast.

IMO and practical experience the differences are pretty minor between most SoCal beach communities. In other words you wouldn't really notice a big difference with regards to sunny days. The SoCal coast is the warmest. Although the Central Coast isn't that far behind with the exception of summer fog which is worse in some years vs others. Ocean water temps are however a different story. SoCal is significantly warmer.

As an old surfer who has traveled the state extensively in search of the perfect wave I have experienced both ocean and land temperatures up and down the coast. Although a bit cooler I prefer the Central Coast once one factors in all the other elements such as traffic, smog, population or over population, crime, wide open spaces vs, over development, more green, trees, natural beauty, etc...

There are many other factors which go in to making an area a better fit and hence provide a higher quality life even if sunny days are high on your list.

As always YMMV,

Derek

Are you sure that real estate values connotes sunny? I don't think Hermosa is sunnier that the rest of the Santa Monica bay [certainly less sunny than Malibu & Long Beach]. I believe the San Diego coastline has the most overcast due to the "Catalina eddy" circulation. But overcast doesn't always mean cooler. San Diego has the warmest summer minimums in coastal California [in part due to low clouds & ocean temps].

[MtnSurfer]

Originally Posted by californio sur

Are you sure that real estate values connotes sunny? I don't think Hermosa is sunnier that the rest of the Santa Monica bay [certainly less sunny than Malibu & Long Beach]. I believe the San Diego coastline has the most overcast due to the "Catalina eddy" circulation. But overcast doesn't always mean cooler. San Diego has the warmest summer minimums in coastal California [in part due to low clouds & ocean temps].

Yahoo Real Estate is just a web portal which contains statistics on different areas one may want to move to. This is similar in some ways to CD. Yahoo doesn't gather to data themselves. They simply use an outside group for their numbers. In this case they are using Sperling's Best Places, which in turn probably uses another research group for statistics.

That as it may, I agree that SD has "warmer" weather even if more clouds than say Hermosa Beach. It also has less precipitation. But the OP was asking about sunny vs. cloudy days. And for some that is more important than avg. temps. I actually prefer a mixture of rain, clouds, sun with some cooler temps. So SD is too dry and drab for me, not enough variety. But again compared to anywhere else in the nation this is probably splitting hairs. I mean most of coastal SoCal weather is warm and mild throughout the year with some minor variations.

For more climatic variation one only has to drive inland ~40-60 miles and then everything changes. I've seen cloudy and 60s in June at the coast while it is sunny and in the 100s inland. Now that is quite a noticable difference in more ways than one.

Derek

[californio sur]

Originally Posted by MtnSurfer

Yahoo Real Estate is just a web portal which contains statistics on different areas one may want to move to. This is similar in some ways to CD. Yahoo doesn't gather to data themselves. They simply use an outside group for their numbers. In this case they are using Sperling's Best Places, which in turn probably uses another research group for statistics.

That as it may, I agree that SD has "warmer" weather even if more clouds than say Hermosa Beach. It also has less precipitation. But the OP was asking about sunny vs. cloudy days. And for some that is more important than avg. temps. I actually prefer a mixture of rain, clouds, sun with some cooler temps. So SD is too dry and drab for me, not enough variety. But again compared to anywhere else in the nation this is probably splitting hairs. I mean most of coastal SoCal weather is warm and mild throughout the year with some minor variations.

For more climatic variation one only has to drive inland ~40-60 miles and then everything changes. I've seen cloudy and 60s in June at the coast while it is sunny and in the 100s inland. Now that is quite a noticable difference in more ways than one.

Derek

I see your point. An example is comparing Santa Barbara to San Diego. Santa Barbara probably gets half the number of cloudy days but is actually no warmer ex: August [average max\ min]
Santa Barbara: 77F\ 60F
San Diego: 78F\ 67F

Because San Diego is the southern-most city it is more likely to get clouds from the Arizona monsoon & dying tropical storms also.

The inland phenomena is even more pronounced in SoCal over very short distances. Santa Monica and Sherman Oaks are less than 10 miles apart but easily can be 10-20 degrees different on a summer day. Coastal breeze keeps Santa Monica around 75F while Sherman Oaks is well over 90F.