Six months here and love it!!! (Fresno, Sacramento: hotels, casinos, rooftop)

[Elliott_CA]

Originally Posted by mxcolin

Weather is awesome. Not as perfect as SoCal but outside of there and maybe San Jose, Sac must have the best weather in the country. The so called “wet and cool” winters were nothing of the sort. Mild, sunny and dry would be a more apt description.

Interesting. I think Sacto's weather is better than L.A.'s -- L.A. has fewer sunshine days and they have that awful June gloom.

You're right about Sacto winters -- they are fairly mild now. If you had been in Sacramento 30 years ago you would have experienced wet, cold and sometimes miserable winters. Gray foggy days of 40 F and high humidity that were bone chilling. Back then you'd go several days without seeing the sun -- it would rain, followed by a couple of days of fog, rain again, then more gray. Climate change has caused a definite and noticeable shift in Sacto winters.

[Kden1036]

I use the EPA AirNow app to check daily air quality. Sacramento’s air prob starts looking rough once it’s hot, sunny, and/or forest fire season, I assume

[DougStark]

Originally Posted by Kden1036

I’m very much worried about the air quality. Air quality is pretty terrible in Denver almost year round—except spring. Inversion traps crappy air in the winter and high ozone all summer long. From what I can tell sacramento has bad air in the summer but maybe not in the winter?? I worry for my children’s health. My young son already does a lot of coughing when exercisIng etc...

Oh my gosh. If you think Denver has poor air quality now, you should have seen it in the '70s. In the mornings, the brown layer in the horizon was hard to miss.

Metro Sac definitely does not have one of the country's worst air quality--that goes to the Inland Empire and metro Fresno, I believe. Sac's air quality may not be "great", but it wouldn't keep me from moving there. Just my opinion. And CA air regulations are the toughest in the nation.

[Kden1036]

Originally Posted by DougStark

Oh my gosh. If you think Denver has poor air quality now, you should have seen it in the '70s. In the mornings, the brown layer in the horizon was hard to miss.

Metro Sac definitely does not have one of the country's worst air quality--that goes to the Inland Empire and metro Fresno, I believe. Sac's air quality may not be "great", but it wouldn't keep me from moving there. Just my opinion. And CA air regulations are the toughest in the nation.

Those tough regs are what give me hope! I think CA is working hard on improving air quality and I love that!

[tstieber]

Originally Posted by Elliott_CA

Interesting. I think Sacto's weather is better than L.A.'s -- L.A. has fewer sunshine days and they have that awful June gloom.

You're right about Sacto winters -- they are fairly mild now. If you had been in Sacramento 30 years ago you would have experienced wet, cold and sometimes miserable winters. Gray foggy days of 40 F and high humidity that were bone chilling. Back then you'd go several days without seeing the sun -- it would rain, followed by a couple of days of fog, rain again, then more gray. Climate change has caused a definite and noticeable shift in Sacto winters.

I remember those winters from 30 years ago when I grew up in the Inland East Bay, which pretty much has the same climate as Sacramento. Then again, I also remember winters in the 80s where we had long drought periods, and in those Winters, it was very very sunny, sometimes to the point of me really craving some gloomy weather. My parents also remember Sunny Winters during droughts in the 70s, but I also have some of my early childhood memories from the late 70s during flooding events. I think the thing about California is that it is supposed to flip flop a lot from year to year, and now we have a lot fewer of the cold and gloomy Winters and more of the milder sunnier ones. One day, there will be a gloomy winter again.

People say the same thing about the May gray and June Gloom in SoCal, that it used to be much more prevalent, and I remember 15 or 20 years ago, we would sometimes have really bad, depressing months. In the past decade, there have been years with hardly any, but this year, it's a blast from the past. I'm walking my dog in San Diego this morning, and I'm bundled up in 57 degrees, which feels like a midwinter afternoon in NorCal. Will get another 10 degrees on that this afternoon, and I'll probably get some sun because I live inland, but the coast has been socked in for weeks.

So I agree that Sacramento has some seasonal weather advantages over SoCal, namely in late spring when it's much sunnier up there. But in the winter, so Cal has longer and warmer periods. I know that overall, Sacramento gets more Sunshine hours per year than either LA or San Diego though. It's a darn nice place to be outside.

[DougStark]

Originally Posted by Elliott_CA

Interesting. I think Sacto's weather is better than L.A.'s -- L.A. has fewer sunshine days and they have that awful June gloom.

You're right about Sacto winters -- they are fairly mild now. If you had been in Sacramento 30 years ago you would have experienced wet, cold and sometimes miserable winters. Gray foggy days of 40 F and high humidity that were bone chilling. Back then you'd go several days without seeing the sun -- it would rain, followed by a couple of days of fog, rain again, then more gray. Climate change has caused a definite and noticeable shift in Sacto winters.

Really? So Sac no longer gets those miserable tule fogs that linger for what seems forever? That climate feature of your MSA was my least favorite thing 30 yrs ago--not your heat.

[Chimérique]

Originally Posted by DougStark

Really? So Sac no longer gets those miserable tule fogs that linger for what seems forever? That climate feature of your MSA was my least favorite thing 30 yrs ago--not your heat.

That kind of fog has been gone 8-9 yrs now. Five out of the last 7 years have been below normal rain, so it could be that has caused virtual zero fog in Sac for the last 8 yrs. The type of fog that raises up to create an overcast sky has NOT been around for the last 10 yrs. Once this last winter the patchy tule fog from the ground formed in my Sac neighborhood in the very early morning. I actually miss the fog and thought it was cool it formed with all the trees and leaves on the ground. It never came back again. Sac still has a winter, very very rainy in 16/17, near normal in 17/18, no more perm overcast and fog.

[mxcolin]

I’ve only had 1 winter here and it was mild, dry and sunny. Not L.A. by any means but you could do far worse.

[nightlysparrow]

Originally Posted by mxcolin

I’ve only had 1 winter here and it was mild, dry and sunny. Not L.A. by any means but you could do far worse.

Please repost in September after a summer of triple-digit days.

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by Elliott_CA

Interesting. I think Sacto's weather is better than L.A.'s -- L.A. has fewer sunshine days and they have that awful June gloom.

You're right about Sacto winters -- they are fairly mild now. If you had been in Sacramento 30 years ago you would have experienced wet, cold and sometimes miserable winters. Gray foggy days of 40 F and high humidity that were bone chilling. Back then you'd go several days without seeing the sun -- it would rain, followed by a couple of days of fog, rain again, then more gray. Climate change has caused a definite and noticeable shift in Sacto winters.

Wow, that’s interesting (and a little alarming) about the noticeable change in climate in such a short time period. I remember living in the foothills above the valley in the ‘70s and during the winters when we would make a trip down the mountain we would go from beautiful sunny (if still chilly) weather and descend into an ocean of white that was the Thule fog of the valley. It was often so miserable, chilly and damp there it was remarkable that in just a few short miles the weather would change so drastically.

Sometimes you couldn’t even drive the fog was so thick. You would just pull over into a field and hope you didn’t get hit from somebody else driving in zero visibility.