Checking in with LA weather. It’s nice.

 Burbank.

 

I frequently feel the need to throw good news in because East Coast journalists will so gleefully report anything bad that happens in Southern California, invariably giving it much more attention than they would far worse disasters anywhere else in the country. Recent case in point: the horrific flooding in Texas.

This pleasant weather is partially the result of the seasonal lag. The hottest part of summer in Southern California comes weeks after the summer solstice, with average temperatures in September being only a degree or so lower than those of August and considerably warmer than July, with the occasional triple-digit day popping up in October.

There are few things which longtime residents find more annoying than New Yorkers complaining that there’s no weather in Los Angeles. There are also few comments that display greater ignorance of the region.

I’ve lived oceanfront on both coasts and in quite a few places in between, and this is the only town I know of where people will call up friends within the city limits and ask, “What’s the weather like where you are?”

This is partly due to the sheer size of the place. The area of the city is just under 500 square miles. The area of the county is close to 5,000 square miles. That said, the bigger factors relate to terrain. The elevation of the city goes from zero to over 5,000 feet. For the county, it’s over 10,000. Both have snow every year.

The county covers coastal areas, mountains, valleys, high deserts, and low deserts. I’ve heard local meteorologists claim that this produces seven distinct microclimates. The TV weather forecasts are broken up into multiple sections for this reason.

One result is that you will experience stunning ranges of conditions often within a few miles of each other. A few years ago, while driving the 405 from North Hollywood, my car’s thermometer dropped more than 30° in the space of about a dozen miles.

I’m not much of a traveler, but I’ve been around the continent a fair amount — particularly the contiguous 48 — mostly by car, so I’ve actually seen it. And I’ve never encountered anything like LA weather in terms of complexity, contrast, or quirks.

There’s a bigger lesson here. If California weather is more varied and interesting than you’ve been led to believe by the national press, perhaps the impression you’ve gotten about other aspects of the state — its culture, its economics, its politics, the problems it faces with housing and wildfires — are also more complex than you realize.