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[OM] Re: OT, poor weather, was Taking Bill's advice

Subject: [OM] Re: OT, poor weather, was Taking Bill's advice
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:39:15 -0700
Chris Barker wrote:
> That was my point, Larry.  It's all hype.  California has its share  
> of poor weather just like everywhere else in the world.
Certainly true, although what one considers poor weather may vary. For 
example, I live on the bay/ocean side of the coastal range, about 2.3 of 
the way up the state, and we get a fair amount of fog/low clouds in the 
summer. I much prefer that to the higher summer temperatures just a few 
miles inland.

And if we don't get storms in the winter, we have no snow pack in the 
mountains and no water in the summer, when it doesn't rain. So winter 
storms are good weather.

But go ahead and put it about that we have bad weather. If not another 
person moves here, that would be good.
> And now they're suffering another natural disaster, poor people.
>   
Just as we have been overgeneralizing about English weather, 
generalizations about Calif. are often very misleading. The UK as a 
whole, including N. Ireland, has an area of about 245,000 sq. km., is 
about 965 km N. to S. and 485 km. E. to W. California is about 411,000 
sq. km., 1,260 km N. to S. and 560 km. E. to W. Calif. is quite a bit 
bigger than the UK and way bigger than England.

And we have more extreme terrain, with large deserts, some below sea 
level, and ranges of mountains much higher than anything in the UK. The 
spine of the Southern Sierra Nevada is a string of 4,300 m peaks, 
resulting in a stretch of the state over 300 km long without any roads 
across. In the winter, that distance becomes over 450 km. and sometimes 
more. Think of a range of mountains almost the length of England that 
are impassable for several months of the year and tall enough that the 
weather is very different on the two sides. And there are some other 
rather serious mountains you probably haven't heard of.

This is not to brag, simply to point out that we have a huge range of 
weather, often at the same time. Mike's pix of Crater Lake? Taken about 
60 miles from the Calif. border. So, at the same time the hot Santa Ana 
winds were blowing up those fire storms in SoCal, we had beautiful 
weather here, with moderate to low fire danger because of some early 
rain storms, and it may have been snowing in far No. Calif. Rain and 
temps in the towns up there mean it was almost certainly snowing in the 
mountains.

Yes, that's a major disaster in SoCal, and I'm very sorry for those 
caught in it, and I sort of know whereof I speak. We had one of those 
here in 1991, driven by the same kind of winds. "The fire ultimately 
killed 25 people and injured 150 others. The 1,520 acres (6.2 km²) 
destroyed included 2,843 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and 
condominium units. The economic loss has been estimated at $1.5 
billion.^"  We walked about three blocks to where we could watch part of 
Oakland going up in flames. Awful and awsome. Very luckily, we were 
upwind, although some folks in the neighborhood were packing rental 
trucks in case.

However, even with the much greater geographic spread of files in SoCal 
this year, it actually only involves a fairly small part of the state, 
geographically speaking.

Moose

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