Whether Weather...

I've been asked, more than once, "what's the weather like on the central coast." With apologies to my friends who live in Redwood City, the US (as opposed to the German) government recognizes the central coast weather as among, if not the best in the world.

Which leads to an interpolation... As many of you are aware, I have been categorizing things for years for a mental book "The World is Divided Into..." One of my categories is that people generally either live where they want to live or they do what they want to do. Seldom do you get to do both. I did what I wanted to do while I lived in Canada. Although it was not where I would have chosen to live, I grew to like everything but the weather there. When I moved back to California, I chose to live where I wanted to live, even though I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. Now, for the most part I have both...

In any event, the weather here is much like that of San Francisco, although milder. We get fog, because we live in a coastal area, but there is enough southern California slop over that the weather tends to be warmer. The first year we lived here, I kid you not, the weather almost every day was what I tell people now when they ask: "70 degrees with a little breeze off the ocean." That's not 365, of course, but more often than not.

But not in the summer. If you have heard Mark Twain's purported remark: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco," you know that we northern Californians smile at the SF tourists who arrive in the City in August in shorts...and then freeze their posteriors off.

It's not that bad here, but summer on the calendar tends to bring our coolest temperatures, and the most fog. The locals refer to it as May gray and June gloom. We've been here 5 years, and it has only been NOT foggy for the fireworks show at Pismo on July 4 once.

There's a couple of things, though. Because of the microclimates that you find along the coast, you can drive 10 miles to San Luis and have 80 degree weather, or another 20 miles beyond that to Paso and have 100 degree weather. So pack accordingly depending upon where you will visit while you are here. The other thing is that while it may be foggy, it will be in the 60s...all day and at night perhaps drop into the mid 50s.

Finally, this year has been "the worst in living memory" according to the locals. (No matter where I've lived, that term is bandied about sometime in the first couple of years.) It has supposedly been the coolest winter summer since 1971. Yesterday, for instance, when I left for church at 8am it was drizzling lightly here, although it was 70 when I got to Templeton about a half hour later. While the rest of the country has sweltered this summer, we've had very mild, although foggy, weather. Statistically that may mean that next year will be hot, but I wouldn't count on it.

So in summary: it's summery here but the weather is only consistently summery inland, and instead of summery in the summer we get wintery, except that our wintery is summery compared to most wintery. Figure that it will be in the 60s or 70s, so bring a "wrap" as my mom used to call it, and do what the locals do: wear layers and always have a hoodie close at hand...except of course during the black tie event...