During this pandemic I have been quarantined at home, admiring the great Southern California weather outside and not being able to enjoy it. Damn, as usual, perfect. I’m being tortured by the outdoor gods. No picnics at the beaches. Unable to enjoy a glass of wine and live music at our favorite outdoor wine tasting spot. I can finally play golf but I have to dress like a surgeon on my way to the operating room. I did see that once before the pandemic. The doctor was really dedicated to his golf game. Restrictions are being eased but it will be a long time before we will be able to get back to our outdoor life in SoCal.
It was the weather that brought me to SoCal. I was sitting in my chair watching the Rose Bowl in the late 1970s, with six feet of snow piled up outside my Chicagoland home and temperatures heading toward zero. On the television, the Pasadena sky was blue and everybody in the stands were in shirt sleeves. I thought to myself, “Why am I still here?” I figured if Jed Clampett moved Granny, Jethro and Elly May out here, it would be a good idea. So I loaded up the truck and headed to California.
I remember watching the players in the World Series trying to stay warm in October then realized how I appreciated the fact that I live in a weather paradise. I’ve noticed temperatures vary little from season to season, it rains once in a while, and it gets windy every so often. Back in the Midwest, our temperatures would go from 30 below zero in the dead of winter to 100 degrees in the middle of summer. One month you’re chipping ice from the driveway; the next, bailing water out of your basement. You don’t just get wind, you get tornadoes. And don’t stand under a tree during a thunderstorm or you may get fried by a lightning bolt. Ask Lee Trevino about that one, ouch! That’s why it surprises me to hear so many complaints about the weather in So Cal and to see how much time the media spends reporting it.
I really get a kick when it starts raining in Southern California…PANIC TIME! If there is a threat of rain, the local TV stations begin their “Team Coverage.” They act as if a meteor just hit the center of Disneyland. When it does start raining, each station has reporters scattered throughout the southland reporting whether it is raining in their location or not. I have a more accurate way of determining if it’s raining at my house. I step outside and if I get wet, it’s raining … or I just left the sprinklers on. The truth is, the heaviest rain here is a light shower in Texas and Louisiana.
News videos of flowing rivers, stranded cars and drivers being rescued are commonplace during storms here. Back where I’m from, rivers have flowing water in them year round and are rarely big news. At the same time, since the Midwest rivers are always full, we never had the urge to drive through them. We used the bridges instead.
We do get hot days but rarely with the kind of humidity you find back east. How can you tell there is serious humidity in the air? Put on some nice laundered clothes and step outside. If you and your clothes are soaking wet in a matter of seconds, you are experiencing the kind of humidity most of the country east of Colorado suffers with … or you left the sprinklers on again.
One great thing about living in Southern California is the ability to experience all kinds of weather within a short drive from my home. In the winter, if for some idiotic reason I miss the snowfall of my Midwest upbringing, I can always go stand hip-deep in it in the local mountains. If I crave the heat and a good case of sunstroke, I can take a short jaunt to the desert. For $150, I can golf any time of the year on the emerald green grass of courses carved out of the barren desert and then spend another $150 on the refreshment cart to avoid dehydration.
Then there’s the beach. The temperature rarely gets out of the 70s and the sun is filtered by a slight overcast. Residents who spend fortunes on 800-sq.-ft. houses to be close to the beach hate June gloom and treat it as if it were the coming of the next Ice Age. They want more sun and more heat. I just tell them the grass is always greener in Palm Springs (if you leave the sprinklers one).
Why people settled in frigid places like Minnesota or the steamy South in the first place baffles me. I just hope the weather is lousy for the Rose Bowl next year (if there is a college football season) so they all will not see how nice we have it, then load up their trucks and move out here.
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