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Comment by sanj | Hacker News Reader

re: Number 2

Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west? I've lost half my family to that coast and they all complain about the sort of weather that is optimal for sledding.

Doesn't anyone else miss having seasons?

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I lived in Boston pretty much my whole life until September. It was 70 degrees here in Palo Alto yesterday. I was playing basketball outside in shorts and a tshirt. I don't miss the cold at all. Not even a bit. It's like a disease. I'm glad I got it cured.

My experience with Northern California is that it rains pretty well every day from December to March. Not that those few days when it doesn't aren't glorious, but people oversell the lack of winter. I think the best part of the climate is the fact that it's not insanely hot the rest of the year.

I was curious, so I checked. At worst (Jan, Feb) it rains about as much in other places in the US. It just seems horribly rainy because the weather the rest of the year is so sunny.

http://pics2.city-data.com/w3/prc2321.png

http://pics2.city-data.com/w6/sun2321.png

A raincloud must have followed you around! Even though that is the heart of the 'rainy season', in SF, about half those days have no measurable rain, and even those with rain are often just a few hundredths of an inch.

Here are historical records for downtown SF:

http://ggweather.com/sf/daily.html

(2005-2006 was especially rainy; was that when you set your 'norm'?)

As a matter of fact, it was. I did say "my experience." I arrived in SF in October 2005, left in Dec. 2007. Rainclouds seem to have been following me around forever.

Early 2006 was extremely wet. I remember getting caught in some crazy downpours. There were a number of floods down in Santa Cruz county that took out roads and caused mudslides. In The City, March 2006 was a record setting rainfall.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/31/...

I still remember thinking - wow, they oversold me on the climate. And then it stopped raining at the end of March. For 8 months. Plus it seemed like the thermometer was pinned at 72 degrees every day.

> Plus it seemed like the thermometer was pinned at 72 degrees every day.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Quite the opposite. As I said, I felt that I was oversold on the climate from my arrival in October till late March. Then, uh, wow.

I live in Southern New England. We get more than our share of rain in the Winter. We also get temperatures rising just above freezing each day so that snow melts and ice forms each evening - wonderful for commutes. At present, my snow pile is level with our 6 foot fence. I have no place to put new snow fall. Only having rain through the Winter, with temperatures well above freezing, would be a blessing.

I love seasons. That's why I live somewhere that skips the shitty ones.

-Daniel Tosh

Does everyone get soft when they spend time out west?

Yes. I'll probably never be able to live in the UK again, to be honest.

From someone who was only able to handle Boston's climate until he graduated from college, we have seasons on the West coast too. We just don't experience them all in one day as often. :-D

In all seriousness, there is seasonal variation both in temperature (which the East coast also has) and in precipitation (which the East coast doesn't have), but they tend not to vary so severely, and there also tends to be less intra-seasonal variance, either. You won't find Seattle going from 80 degrees and muggy to 30 degrees and snowing over the course of 12 hours -- this happened while I was in Boston in April of a year that hopefully someone else here can fill in.

It might be a bit soft, but I think of it as removing weather from the list of things that distract you from more important work.

I'm assuming you meant that the west coast doesn't have precipitation variation. I quite like snow!

Then again, my earliest memories are from here: http://tinyurl.com/cbp4lf

Within a season. The east coast has four seasons; California has two: a 9-month warm, dry season and a 3-month cool, wet one. Seeing rain during the dry season is always a surprise, and people complain how weird the weather is. (Of course it does happen a few times, but always accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth.) During the winter, light rain a few times a week is permissible. And it's still not actually cold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate

When I moved out east this year I was shocked that nobody here seems to know what the weather's like on the west coast. I suppose that's because it's never covered in the national news.

There's more to CA than the coast and the valleys. There's also mountains.

If you want snow, the Sierras, which are two hours away from the SF Bay Area, get 20-40 FEET a year, with a 10+ foot snow pack. http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/donner.html isn't even the place that gets the most snow.

The variation I was referring to was precipitation amount. The monthly average precipitation graph for Seattle looks very much like a sine wave. The graph for most Eastern Seaboard cities look much more like a constant function.

Wow - did you grow up on a diet of seal blubber? I'm from Ottawa, currently living in SV. I only miss the snow once in a while - more now that I have kids though.

California still has seasons I'd say. Here in Hawaii it is extremely easy to lose sense of time; you blink and pow! three years have been passed.

But once you learn to see changes in subtle things such as the color tone of Diamond Head (it's greener in winter), and also not to forget checking calenders, you can even work here.

Me. I fled Silicon Valley for Boston and I don't miss it.

Of course, I didn't have the budget (or the correct commute) to live in Palo Alto when I was in CA. Palo Alto is a fine place, no question.

I think year round warmth makes you soft. I used to live in south Florida. I moved there in the winter and was wearing shorts when it was in the 60s while everyone else was wearing jackets. I laughed at a friend of mine for saying it was cold. The next winter, I got cold when it was in the 60s and my friend got to laugh at me.

Doesn't anyone else miss having seasons?

From someone who has never lived below the mason-dixon, no.

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