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Comment by ojbyrne | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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