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I used to know a whole lot more about the climate, but it seems it has evolved. I was a fire weather observer for the USFS a long time ago and took meteorology in college. We just had .4" of rain in the foothills the other day. It never used to rain in June before. First time I encountered rain in June was in Seattle. Go figure.
Seattle is significantly warmer than SF in summer. Seattle averages 70-76 from June to August. SF only averages 66-68 during the same period. September averages 70 for a high in SF, its warmest month. Outside of Alaska I do not think there is any big city colder than SF in summer.
SD regularly reaches the low 70's every summer in the water. Out of my 9 years in SD, all but one summer had water that didn't get warm/swimmable (68+).
Curious to see how this summer will shape up for water temperatures in San Diego. So far the current temperature of 67 degrees is the warmest we've had all year. But I don't think that is below average at all. Up until a week ago, we were no better than the low 60s so I'm crossing my fingers. I'm still sticking to my pool with solar heating! :-)
These answers are a bit weak and not accurate. Not sure why you would pick Napa and San Rafeal either... as opposed to what SoCal.
4 seasons: using SD is the worst example of 4 seasons. Chico, Redding, Santa Rosa, Sacramento, for example, would be a much stronger case of 4 seasons than San Diego or just about anywhere in SoCal.
Think of rain, clouds, fog, cold days and night in Redding, Chico, Sacramento compared to SD. NorCal in the winter is more like the Pacific Northwest than SoCal.
Sorry, the winter comparison to the Pacific Northwest is highly incorrect. Even though Northern California Winters are chillier than Southern California Winters, they are closer to each other than either is to the northwest. Keep in mind that San Francisco, for example, has not even recorded a freezing temperature since December 24th, 1990. That's almost three decades. There has not been snowfall at sea level in the Bay Area since 1976 which is more than 40 years. And the coldest temperature ever recorded in San Francisco is the same as San Diego, which I believe off the top of my head is around 26 or 27 degrees. Compare that to places like Portland OR Seattle. The all-time record lows in those areas are around 0 degrees, and there are typically some days in the winter where both cities do not even get above freezing all day and all night for several days in a row, and snowfall events happen a few times a year. In addition, the average number of rainy days per year in Portland and Seattle are almost three times as many as cities like San Francisco, San Jose, or Sacramento, where the bulk of the population in Northern California lives. If you just look at the vegetation around California, then you'll also see more commonality than differences. For example, you'll see palm trees growing throughout the State all the way up to Redding, and the Foothills east of Sacramento are commercial Citrus growing areas. Try keeping a citrus tree alive in the northwest.
While of course the Inland areas of Northern California, away from the mildness of the San Francisco Coast, do get periodic nighttime frosts and freezes in the winter, so do the Inland portions of Southern California. In fact, the greater frequency of cloud cover during the winter in Northern California is an advantage in that regard, as it is only on clear nights that frosts and freezes occur, and Southern California gets more clear nights during the winter. That's why inland areas like Temecula, Ramona, Escondido, La Mesa average low temperatures in the high 30s in winter, which is similar to inland Northern California. With more Sun during that time of year, however, So Cal gets the advantage of daytime Heating.
For the Pacific Northwest, the bigger issue is simply that it is so far north that if can't escape the effects of latitude and the intrusion of Arctic air masses. Consider, for example, that the Bay Area is only three degrees of latitude from LA and 5 degrees of latitude from San Diego. But it is 10 - 12 degrees of latitude from Washington State. I think the Northwest is really far up there!
I've been to the Pacific Northwest numerous times, and the first time we went was at the end of October. We had left the Bay Area during what seemed like an endless stretch of 75 degrees sunshine, and when we arrived in Seattle, the high temperature was hovering around 50 degrees with low temperatures at night in the mid twenties. And this was the weather throughout the entire week we were there. In fact, the 5 coldest months of the year in Seattle are colder than *any* month of the year in Northern California. Look at the temperature averages from November through March. Imagine the coldest winter weather in NorCal, make it colder, and make it last for almost half the year, and you've got the northwest.
Another very interesting winter statistic for the Pacific Northwest happened just one or two years ago. January of 2015 or 2016 (can't remember) was the warmest *ever* recorded at each West Coast station, from Seattle to San Diego. What's interesting is that temperatures reported in NorCal that winter were at least warmer than *average* winter temperatures in SoCal, even though SoCal had even warmer temperatures than that during that particular year . But Seattle, even in the warmest winter ever recorded in its entire history, was still colder than just an average winter in NorCal. That means an average winter in NorCal is still warmer than any winter has ever been in the Pacific Northwest. Northwest Winters are hell.
California, yes. Nationwide, probably Seattle but it's up there. With windchill though I'd say yes. Seattle is a tad colder but you don't get the fog and wind the way you do in San Francisco.
0-3 months, depending on what beach and cold tolerance. California beaches do not get that warm even all the way down in San Diego. Hawaii beaches are about as warm in the winter as the warmest (San Diego) beaches in California are in the summer. It's not like you're going to die in a 65 degree water without a wet suit but most people are going to wear at least a shorty. Also are we talking swimming or surfing? I'm not a surfer but I've swam in open water around 65 degrees with no wet suit. I don't imagine I'd want to surf in it though. Less physical exertion and you're in and out and exposed to the wind much more in surfing.
Average, maybe 4-6 inches less. Napa or San Rafeal get a fair amount of rain but most of NorCal doesn't.
More distant from where the jet stream frequently runs, aka Pineapple Express.
All of them. It's just the weather is so mild they're not really that apparent. The difference between winter and summer in San Diego is a few drops of rain and 10 degrees. San Diego still has a definite winter rainy season it's just not that cold and not that rainy. It also has a definite summer season. It's just not that hot. Fall and Spring are transitions.
I actually think you were spot-on with this answer with the sole exception of San Francisco, as mentioned. Seattle has much warmer and calmer Summers than San Francisco. The only downside to Seattle is that it does get at least some rain even in summer.
Sorry, the winter comparison to the Pacific Northwest is highly incorrect. Even though Northern California Winters are chillier than Southern California Winters, they are closer to each other than either is to the northwest. Keep in mind that San Francisco, for example, has not even recorded a freezing temperature since December 24th, 1990. That's almost three decades. There has not been snowfall at sea level in the Bay Area since 1976 which is more than 40 years. And the coldest temperature ever recorded in San Francisco is the same as San Diego, which I believe off the top of my head is around 26 or 27 degrees. Compare that to places like Portland OR Seattle. The all-time record lows in those areas are around 0 degrees, and there are typically some days in the winter where both cities do not even get above freezing all day and all night for several days in a row, and snowfall events happen a few times a year[/b]. In addition, the average number of rainy days per year in Portland and Seattle are almost three times as many as cities like San Francisco, San Jose, or Sacramento, where the bulk of the population in Northern California lives. If you just look at the vegetation around California, then you'll also see more commonality than differences. For example, you'll see palm trees growing throughout the State all the way up to Redding, and the Foothills east of Sacramento are commercial Citrus growing areas. Try keeping a citrus tree alive in the northwest.
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San Francisco and San Diego are right on the ocean. Portland is quite a bit inland as is Seattle, although on a sound, called Puget.
The Santa Cruz Mountains and western Marin and Sonoma Co. get much more rainfall than Seattle or Portland, albeit in a shorter period of time. Also, are their native redwoods or Doug Firs in LA or San Diego? There is more to NorCal than the City and San Jose. Mt Diablo, Hamilton and Mt St Helena often get snow every winter
Looks like this will be a decent summer at the Southern California coast after all. Best way is to gauge the SST for the overall seasonal pattern as heat waves on land can be deceptive. SST just hit 70F for the first time this year in San Diego and it it is in the upper 60s right now. While it won't be quite as balmy as summer of 2015, I think we'll have decent beach conditions this summer. First half of June was below average both on land and in the water. The upwelling on the coast has relaxed allowing the water to warm up with the marine layer being far patchier and burning off by mid day. I wouldn't be surprised if we hit mid 70s SST with overnight lows above 70 in August and maybe even a little bit of monsoonal moisture as well.
San Francisco and San Diego are right on the ocean. Portland is quite a bit inland as is Seattle, although on a sound, called Puget.
The Santa Cruz Mountains and western Marin and Sonoma Co. get much more rainfall than Seattle or Portland, albeit in a shorter period of time. Also, are their native redwoods or Doug Firs in LA or San Diego? There is more to NorCal than the City and San Jose. Mt Diablo, Hamilton and Mt St Helena often get snow every winter
I am aware of the topography of the west coast and the rainfall in certain microclimates like the SC Mountains, but what does their rainfall have to do with anything? Other parts of the Bay Area are drier than LA -- also meaningless to the big picture. Palomar Mountain here in SD gets as much rain as Seattle, plus more than two feet of snow per year. But these are all just random examples of the West's varied microclimates. There are places in the Northwest that are drier than places in Northern California, and there are places in Southern California that are wetter than places in Northern California. Way too many variations to use individual examples to try to make a point.You really have to look at regions as a whole.
And if you do look at regions as a whole, you'll still find that all of California is much more similar to each other than to the Pacific Northwest. Yet I would still classify them as three different climates. There's the Pacific Northwest, then Northern California, then Southern California. It's just that the northern and southern California climates support very similar plants, so as far as what nurseries carry, for example, they will be quite similar, and if you wanted to grow things like avocados, oranges, palm trees, that sort of thing, you can do that throughout California but not in the northwest.
You are correct that there are no native redwoods in Southern California, only ones that have been planted. But the same goes for the Pacific Northwest. There is only a very small sliver of native redwoods on the very southern tip of Oregon near the California border, about 20 miles in from the border. North of that, the climate changes, and the native Redwood forests abruptly stop. Redwoods are distinctly a Northern and central California tree and not at all a Pacific Northwest tree. But it is a very adaptable tree. I believe it can be planted in Portland and Seattle, and on the opposite extreme, you'll see them growing very successfully in furnace hot and dry places like Fresno. They have also been planted successfully in Spain and higher elevations of Hawaii. San Diego, of course, has the beautiful Torrey pine which also grows successfully throughout California if you chose to plant it. As for Douglas Firs, I grew up in the Inland East Bay Area,so I have no idea what they look like. Our native vegetation was seasonal grassland, oaks, and Chaparral, which incidentally is a type of landscape that does extend into the southernmost portion Oregon around Ashland, as well as into parts of San Diego County around Santa ysabel. My point is that we do have overlap between different parts of the West Coast, with some individual plants being native all the way from British Columbia to Northern Baja, but on the whole, we have our distinctions as well, which is why trying to climactically lump together Northern California and the Northwest is insane in my opinion. That covers almost the entire West Coast.
As someone who grew up with Mount Diablo in my backyard, I also need to correct your assertion that it snows often every winter. Growing up and waiting for those snow days with bated breath, it usually snowed about once a season on average. I remember only one winter when it snowed three times, and I remember numerous winter when it would never snow, which meant we'd have to wait more than an entire year to play in the snow. But absolutely, definitely not 'often.' At an elevation just shy of 4000 feet that close to Marine influence, you just aren't High Enough to get that on a consistent basis. Now that I live in San Diego, I actually do better with our local mountains, because even at 32 degrees latitude instead of 37, the higher elevations more than make up for it. So ironically, have way better day-tripping snow day options in San Diego than the Bay Area. I can get to way deeper snow falls and real Pine forests on Palomar or Laguna. :-)
I will admit that I probably heard the weather forecast calling for snowfall on Mount Diablo about a dozen times each winter, just that it was a lot of fanfare for nothing. It was always overblown and almost never actually happened. I knew not to get my hopes up. That's one thing I did used to notice about Northern California when I used to live there. They always knew how to make nothing sound like something. Weather forecasts always had a lot of hype but tended to be more bark than bite. Weather forecasters and people in general in Northern California used to talk about the weather like a lot was happening even when nothing was happening. It was so weird! I didn't notice it so much in Walnut Creek where I grew up, but on the Bay Side Of The Bay, it was prevalent.
I am aware of the topography of the west coast and the rainfall in certain microclimates like the SC Mountains, but what does their rainfall have to do with anything? Other parts of the Bay Area are drier than LA -- also meaningless to the big picture. Palomar Mountain here in SD gets as much rain as Seattle, plus more than two feet of snow per year. But these are all just random examples of the West's varied microclimates. There are places in the Northwest that are drier than places in Northern California, and there are places in Southern California that are wetter than places in Northern California. Way too many variations to use individual examples to try to make a point.You really have to look at regions as a whole.
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I'd like you to back up your idea that parts of the Bay Area are drier than LA. Just take a look at the countryside of the LA basin. Brushy hills with some trees along water courses. In the Bay Area you have forested mountains, even in San Jose. Not to mention the eastbay and Marin. What parts of SoCal get 60 inches of rain and are densely forested? Most of the hills in the Bay Area support forest. I grew up in the Bay Area and lived in the LA area in my teen years.
I think anyone who visits the Santa Monica mountains and then visits the east bay hills, Marin, the Santa Cruz mountains, Sonoma county, Napa Co. will quickly see a vast difference in the landscape. Forest, woodland vs brush land.
I'd like you to back up your idea that parts of the Bay Area are drier than LA. Just take a look at the countryside of the LA basin. Brushy hills with some trees along water courses. In the Bay Area you have forested mountains, even in San Jose. Not to mention the eastbay and Marin. What parts of SoCal get 60 inches of rain and are densely forested? Most of the hills in the Bay Area support forest. I grew up in the Bay Area and lived in the LA area in my teen years.
I think anyone who visits the Santa Monica mountains and then visits the east bay hills, Marin, the Santa Cruz mountains, Sonoma county, Napa Co. will quickly see a vast difference in the landscape. Forest, woodland vs brush land.
Sure, you are actually making my job super easy and your own job hard! Of course, the Bay Area as a whole gets more rain than the LA area as a whole, and the Santa Cruz mountains have lots of redwood forest due to their high elevations that create orthographic lift that allows them to catch moisture, but I was saying that there are PARTS of the Bay Area that are drier than LA, and that is easy to show.
I'll post some statistics below. But... where are you going to find ANY city in the Bay Area that gets 60 inches of rain? Even Eureka, CA, hundreds of miles to the north on the North Coast, averages only 40.33 inches of rain, and I can't find any known or populated city in the Bay Area that averages more than Santa Rosa at 32.2 inches. I know parts of the far northern Coast Ranges at high elevations, near the Oregon border, have that sort of rainfall, but nothing in the Bay Area.
Also, how do the Easy Bay Hills have dense forest? I grew up in the East Bay and would say with the exception of the small redwood grove at Redwood Regional Park, there is no natural forest there. The Berkeley and Oakland hills are thickly covered with a man-made faux-forest, but that's not the native state you see in old photos. That's an urban forest like the one at the Presidio in San Francisco. In fact, I would say dense forests are quite the exception and not the norm in the Bay Area landscape, and typically forests grow only at higher elevations near the coast and in remote, unpopulated areas. Such areas are also typically the wettest and most forested in SoCal, even if they are relatively not as wet as their Bay Area counterparts. But for example, some of my local mountains in San Diego like Mount Laguna and Palomar Mountain do have what I would consider dense native forest.
Anyway, here are some statistics for average annual rainfall for the Bay Area and LA, taken from Wikipedia whenever possible:
29.43 Sonoma
27.71 Napa
23.65 San Francisco
20.12 Walnut Creek
18.38 Concord
17.79 Canoga Park
17.45 Burbank
16.68 Fremont
15.82 San Jose
15.08 Milpitas
14.93 Los Angeles
14.70 Mountain View
14.49 Santa Clara
14.48 Pleasanton
14.19 Livermore
13.97 Santa Monica
As you can see, north of the Golden Gate, the rainfall totals really start going up. But south of it, they really drop. Parts of the East Bay and South Bay are, in fact, drier than parts of LA metro. In fact, the geography of SFV looks almost exactly like Concord.
Here are some photos of the type of landscape I grew up with in the East Bay. No lush forests at all. It's been in the triple digits the past few days:
And one of downtown San Jose with the natural hillsides in the background:
I don't really perceive these landscapes to be much different or more lush than those of the LA area.
And just for posterity, some photos of beautiful forests near me in San Diego County:
I'm obviously not trying to suggest that San Diego County or SoCal in general has more forest than the Bay Area, just that it does exist and that there is overlap between all parts of California due to many factors including proximity to the coast and elevation that offset latitudinal differences. It's a fallacy to say the Bay Area is wet and forested and SoCal is dry and dusty, as it's simply not accurate. There are both wet and dry microclimates and lush and barren landscapes in both regions, even if LA's 'spectrum' of these is somewhat drier overall. But no matter where you are in California, you can 'have it all' within one hour of wherever you're standing.
Hope this clarifies my point! And you owe me a statistic, please! Show me SIXTY inches of average annual rainfall anywhere in the Bay Area. Even Santa Rosa, its wettest city, has never recorded that much in its entire history. :-)
Su
Also, how do the Easy Bay Hills have dense forest? I grew up in the East Bay and would say with the exception of the small redwood grove at Redwood Regional Park, there is no natural forest there. The Berkeley and Oakland hills are thickly covered with a man-made faux-forest, but that's not the native state you see in old photos. That's an urban forest like the one at the Presidio in San Francisco. In fact, I would say dense forests are quite the exception and not the norm in the Bay Area landscape, and typically forests grow only at higher elevations near the coast and in remote, unpopulated areas. Such areas are also typically the wettest and most forested in SoCal, even if they are relatively not as wet as their Bay Area counterparts. But for example, some of my local mountains in San Diego like Mount Laguna and Palomar Mountain do have what I would consider dense native forest.
Here are some photos of the type of landscape I grew up with in the East Bay. No lush forests at all. It's been in the triple digits the past few days:
There are oak woodlands forests dotting the East Bay, though I wouldn't describe that type of forest as dense or lush. Usually the western facing hills have them more so.
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