how cold does sacramento get in the winter? (Los Angeles, San Diego: schools, pool)

[tstieber]

Originally Posted by mixxalot

San Diego has better weather than Sacramento. When I was in Sacramento last week for a job interview, it poured BUCKETS of rain the moment I exited the plane and was freezing cold the morning. San Diego is much warmer.

Oh that sucks that you were in last week's rain, because it's actually been a pretty dry winter throughout the state, and Sac hasn't had that many rainy days (and expecting sunny weather for the next two weeks). I agree that San Diego is much warmer, especially the part I live in. When we moved from Mission Valley to eastern Scripps Ranch, it felt like we were living in a different city! People tell us even the air smells and feels different out here. I absolutely love the dry, warm climate so much better than the cooler, moister coastal climate. San Diego winters are hard to beat. That's why I was making the point about Sac having a true Mediterranean climate, which is noticeably cooler and wetter in winter than San Diego's semi-arid near-desert. But Sac has more sunny days over the course of the year than SD, and it's still one of the better climates in America.

[49erfan916]

It doesn't get THAT COLD here but there's days where I'm cursing up a storm because my house is 55 degrees from the inside.

[tstieber]

Here's this week's Bay Area forecast... Hopefully the valley is getting in on some of this warmth!

[KC6ZLV]

Originally Posted by tstieber

Here's this week's Bay Area forecast... Hopefully the valley is getting in on some of this warmth!

I hope not. A lot of our agricultural crops require chilling to produce fruit. Those temperatures will cut the chilling short.

[tstieber]

Originally Posted by KC6ZLV

I hope not. A lot of our agricultural crops require chilling to produce fruit. Those temperatures will cut the chilling short.

True! As it is, I remember getting tons of stone fruit and cherries on our trees growing up in Walnut Creek, but for the past twenty years, my parents haven't gotten a single cherry or apricot anymore, just plums, loquats, pomegranates, and citrus. And very little frost anymore. I see such a huge difference to how it used to be.

[citizensadvocate]

Originally Posted by tstieber

That's so interesting about Barcelona and Athens. You are correct that the winter averages seem a touch milder than Sacramento, but it seems every time I look at their temperatures during the winter months, they are at least as cold. Maybe it's just been a fluke over the past number of years. Everyone's weather has been outside of their averages. For example, my brother lives in North Carolina and seems to get single-digit low temperatures pretty much every winter nowadays, and quite a few days that never get above freezing, and he's not in the mountains or anything. Looking at Barcelona's forecast for the week, it looks like it will be low to mid 50s during the day, which is below their average and a good 10 or more degrees cooler than Sacramento during the same week.

I've looked at Madrid's climate in the past, but the main difference is that the daytime high temperatures in the winter average only around 49 to 50 degrees. Precipitation is a few inches less but on roughly the same number of days, so yes, overall quite similar! I suppose Sacramento is sort of in-between Madrid and Barcelona in terms of winter weather, as Barcelona averages around 59 to 60 degrees. Sacramento is smack dab between the two. Another very similar climate is Jerusalem. The precipitation, Sunshine hours, and number of rainy days, and average temperatures are remarkably similar to at least my own hometown of Walnut Creek, but without checking, that may be a few degrees cooler in summer than Sacramento.

One thing I do notice about the Mediterranean cities is that they seem to be more prone to snowfall than sea Level locations in California. It seems every few years, there are pictures of Monaco, Istanbul, Athens, Jerusalem, etcetera in the snow. In fact, right around Christmas, there was a ton of snow in Greece, and I remember about eight or nine years ago, when a friend of the family moved to Jerusalem, they got clobbered. Of course these are all freak occurrences, but they seem to occur much more often than in California, where we seem to go for decades without snow. I also remember friends of mine traveling through the Mediterranean one winter in college, and they said it was ridiculously cold everywhere. So I think one thing is that perhaps Mediterranean Winters have bigger fluctuations of warm and cold. It would be interesting to check.

All in all, Sacramento climate is well within the same temperature ranges as Mediterranean cities, and in fact I'm sure areas just Inland from coastal cities like Barcelona would be very similar.

One thing that I cringe about is when other places that normally have warmer weather in the winter seem to get more of these freak snow events than in places like Sacramento which gets pretty chilly with fog.
Based on people who live there Austin Texas is normally in the 70s for most days in the winter but they get a freak snow event once about every two-three years and enough to actually cover the ground in parts of the city. Sometimes it appears even normally warm New Orleans or even cities in Florida where its a pretty rare to encounter a day of the year that the a/c doesn't kick on at all even in the dead of winter, seem to get more of these freak snow events. And no where in Florida is well above sea level as the highest elevation in florida is less than 400ft or lower than most cities in California, including downtown LA. Irecently heard Charleston got a freak snowstorm and quite a bit of it this winter even though they are normally warm and comfortable.

Cities like Sacramento or Redding as well as most of NorCal seem to get all the blues of winter, i.e grey skis, chilly layers of dense fog, needing to bundle up for most days with temps in the 40s to 60s) but far less of the pretty stuff than other similar climates in a 100 year period. Getting some pretty stuff once in a while seems a blessing. Especially when you don't have to bundle up most other days of the winter.

Though not all places you mentioned are at sea level. Jerasalem's elevation is about 3000ft above sea level. Similar to Mt Diablo.

[dontbelievehim]

Originally Posted by tstieber

Here's this week's Bay Area forecast... Hopefully the valley is getting in on some of this warmth!

We are in Fresno
Shorts season is back

[tstieber]

Originally Posted by citizensadvocate

One thing that I cringe about is when other places that normally have warmer weather in the winter seem to get more of these freak snow events than in places like Sacramento which gets pretty chilly with fog.
Based on people who live there Austin Texas is normally in the 70s for most days in the winter but they get a freak snow event once about every two-three years and enough to actually cover the ground in parts of the city. Sometimes it appears even normally warm New Orleans or even cities in Florida where its a pretty rare to encounter a day of the year that the a/c doesn't kick on at all even in the dead of winter, seem to get more of these freak snow events. And no where in Florida is well above sea level as the highest elevation in florida is less than 400ft or lower than most cities in California, including downtown LA. Irecently heard Charleston got a freak snowstorm and quite a bit of it this winter even though they are normally warm and comfortable.

Cities like Sacramento or Redding as well as most of NorCal seem to get all the blues of winter, i.e grey skis, chilly layers of dense fog, needing to bundle up for most days with temps in the 40s to 60s) but far less of the pretty stuff than other similar climates in a 100 year period. Getting some pretty stuff once in a while seems a blessing. Especially when you don't have to bundle up most other days of the winter.

Though not all places you mentioned are at sea level. Jerasalem's elevation is about 3000ft above sea level. Similar to Mt Diablo.

Yes, Jerusalem has the higher elevation, which sort of makes up for being at a more southerly latitude. I noticed that down here in San Diego, once you get up to around 2500 feet, the landscape looks just like in Northern and central California all of a sudden, with a rolling Golden Hills and oak trees.

Places like Austin and Charleston normally have some warm days during the winter, but if you look at their winter averages, they hover right around 60 or 61 degrees in December and January, so it wouldn't be normal to be in the 70s everyday without being well-above-average. It's the constant tug-of-war between warm and cold that can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it's nice to enjoy both the wintry cold snaps and interspersed summer-like days to break it up, on the other hand it means those cold snaps push you into lower USDA climate zones so that it can be harder to grow certain things like citrus, if those things are important to you.

In December, Charleston had eight days topping out at only 50 or below, but there were smatterings of days in the 70s. In January, Charleston had seven days topping out in the 30s and another four between 40 and 50. In both months, those are more colder days than Sacramento would have seen, so whether or not the warm days (there were four days in the low 70s) make up for it is personal preference I think. Also, Charleston's lowest temperature in January was 18 degrees, almost as cold as Sacramento's all-time record low ever recorded. But both Charleston and Austin have colder all-time record lows. Charleston, by the way, is one of my favorite places on Earth!

Looking at Sacramento reported temperatures for December on AccuWeather, it looks like 22 days in December were at 60 degrees or above, and the rest were in the 50s. It did dip into the low 30s quite often during December though. I don't know that Sacramento gets very much winter fog at all anymore like it used to, so unless there are rain storms coming through, winter Sky conditions aren't nearly as drab as they were back in the eighties and nineties. I know certainly Bay Area Winters see much sunnier to me these days.

Personally, I love as much warm weather year-round as possible without getting too much stifling heat in the summer, so I prefer San Diego over Sacramento, but I would still strongly prefer Sacramento over the humidity of Austin and Charleston and then the winter cold snaps. But really, any of those climates are among the nicest in the country. I suppose I can live wherever palm trees grow.

[citizensadvocate]

True and Jerusalem doesn't necessary get snow every winter, its kind of like Mt Diablo. Though it has some years with white Christmases during the last twenty years.

Interesting how Austin is much southern than Sacramento and while is usually warmer as its average Jan temperatures in the 60s arn't too different from cities in SoCal. Average highs and lows in January is just about three degrees lower than San Diego or Los Angeles and many winter days there do indeed feel like summer in other places just as with SoCal. Yet on the extreme side they can get much colder. Same can be said for many cities along the south and east even on the coastline next to a "warm" body of water, i.e the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic Ocean i.e Charleston, Georgia, and even cities in Florida. Its hard to believe they can get that cold as I went to Florida in December and it felt like middle of summer with the heat and humidity and I went from SoCal.

By this logic cities in California particularly the ones away from the immediate coast should be getting much lower all time lows and more freak snow days within a 50 year period. Based on its latitude and average January temps. Average temps in Sacramento are considerably colder indeed than all those other cities I am comparing yet they have the highest all time low maybe with the exception of SoCal. Though SoCal all time lows are not much higher. It doesn't matter much as in Sacramento and much of NorCal for that matter you will need to bundle up much more than all these other places I mentioned in a typical winter. It is also interesting how Redding despite being so far north is not really colder in climate. Its average high and lows in January is not so different from Sacramento and most of Central/North California and its all time low just slightly lower. Its summers are brutal though even for Central Valley standards.

[KC6ZLV]

Many of those Mediterranean cites are at a slightly higher latitude than Sacramento. Another factor is California's weather usually comes across the Pacific, which moderates temperatures. The weather in the Mediterranean moves over Western Europe, which results in colder air masses and lower dew points. This is the same thing as a cold continental air mass moving down to the Gulf Coast and producing snow.