Spain, with a climate not unlike SoCal, is at about the same latitude as NY.
Also consider how the West Coast compares with the East Coast.
As for CA, the coastal mountains and the Central Valley play a part in our
weather in different areas of the state. However, SoCal is differentiated by
the coast line. The abrupt change at Point Conception causes our typical
weather flows to hit land north of PC but stay over water for a while south
of PC. This makes PC the place where, weather-wise, we can best demark SoCal
from NoCal, IMO.
However, before we blame everything on these land forms, note also that the
Mid-Pacific Stationary High has a major influence on the West Coast. Storm
systems tend to be deflected to the north, so that many systems hit north of
CA, or at least NoCal and north, whereas the typical effect on SoCal is to
get some clouds from the storm's extreme tail. (The seasonal shift of
position of this stationary high is the reason why SoCal only gets rain in
the winter.)
As for your "colder than I remember" experience, we need to avoid the
mistake of viewing geography/geology in terms of human lifespans, rather
than in terms of eons. Weather records have only been kept for less than 150
years (systematically by the US guvmint, at least), and the science of
observation was very crude at the beginning. That would be kind of like
evaluating your life based on the last two seconds.
I've never seen snow in the LA Basin, but it has happened. A couple of years
ago, we thought we were going to see an all-time record rainfall as measured
at Downtown LA (but we missed something like a half-inch). However,
"all-time" means "in the last 130 years"; certainly the location which is
now Downtown LA has received more rain--who knows, maybe many inches' more
rain--at some time over the eons.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Wilson" <joel1847@msn.com>
To: <californiadisasters@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 5:17 AM
Subject: [californiadisasters] Re: Record-High Temperatures Expected
It's been above average precip-wise up in norcal. We're close to our
average rainfall for Dec already and we've got more rain coming this week.
Overall, the temps here have been below normal, especially that hard freeze
we had a couple weeks back. I can't remember the last time we had a hard
freeze like that at this time of the year. January, yes. Nov-Dec, nope. I
wonder where the line is for the weather between norcal and socal. Sac?
Modesto maybe? I know we're far from 80 degrees up here and we're right
near the 40th parallel.
Joel
norcal
--- In californiadisasters@yahoogroups.com, Kim Noyes <kimnoyes@...> wrote:
>
> Weird in a general sense of what one expects this time of year at this
> latitude in this hemisphere but rather typical for this region during a
> strong La Nina. Thus far the weather across the nation has stuck to the
> script for a strong La Nina.
>
> Kimmer
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