I live in San Diego. One week ago today the temperature high here was 70°. Right now it’s 100° outside. These radical fluctuations in temperature come with the Santa Ana winds, a.ka. the “devil winds,” so-called because when they blow in from the east all of Southern California becomes hot as You Know Where.
It seems like each year the Santa Ana winds blow harder, longer and more often. There used to be a short Santa Ana season wherein the winds would periodically gently blow; now those furnace blasts roar through for days on end. And for the last month or two they’ve come once a week.
This, combined with the fact that California is suffering through one of the most severe droughts on record, results in … well, this sceen shot, just taken from the San Diego County Emergency Site:
(If it’s too small for you to see, it lists a bunch of recent and ongoing wildfires that are now breaking out all over San Diego. I was at the gym yesterday with my friend Pastor Bob, and there were so many firetrucks screaming all around the place that I thought I was finally going to have a real reason not to work out. But, alas, they were only turning the parking lot of the gym into a staging area for the largest of the fires the county is now facing. Pffft. And those guys call themselves civil servants.)
I actually think my wife and I might have to evacuate before too long here: one of those fires is right now about ten miles from our house. But we probably won’t have to flee. I hope not. I never even know where my shoes are, let alone stuff like my wallet. If we’re supposed to evacuate I might as well just sit on our couch and wait to fry (which is probably my ultimate fate anyway), because the only other option will be to actually find my car keys. And I don’t see that happening in a rush.
I hope my wife Cat meets a nice guy at the emergency shelter. Someone with some organizational skills, for one. She deserves a man like that.
Anyway, I am now officially fascinated by weather. Like, seriously, crazily interested.
Please tell me in the comments selection below what if anything is generally going on with the weather where you live. Please share the place you live, where in your state that’s located, and what your experience has been–over however long a period you think is pertinent–with the weather there.
Specifically, has your weather gone bonkers lately? If so, does it freak you out at all?
I get a lot of kind of random reports from people across the country about bizarre weather they’re having. A wildlife photographer friend in Yosemite reports an alarming drop in the number of myriad animals and birds he’s been dependably seeing in the same spots every year for decades. A friend this winter sent me a screen save of his weather in Montana: 22 degrees below zero. (I don’t know if that was particularly abnormal or not, but just seeing a figure like that made me break out one of my better Hawaiian shirts.) Someone recently posted me a note about how a riverbed that’s been dry since he was a kid recently flooded. He’s officially freaked.
So now I wanna know more. I know I could follow the weather on TV or in the news–but along with “following the news” comes so much media crap that at this point in my life I prefer to remain as uninformed as anyone can these days. Plus … I dunno: something about hearing what actual people are actually experiencing makes things so much more … real, somehow. You know what I mean. I hope.
Toward that hope, please tell me/us what’s happening with your local weather. I’d like to know. And maybe it would also be helpful to have such information in one place. It would be interesting, for sure. Very, to me.
So what’s happening with the weather where you live? Has it changed?
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