Jim, I think you're thinking of the Sierra Nevada mountain range (with a bit of the Cascades at the far north end of the state). The Rocky Mountains would be more in Colorado and such.
As a third-generation native of San Francisco, I'm really aware of what the hills, ocean and mountains do to the weather there. In the summer the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys heat up, but the heat doesn't come from the Gulf of Mexico like back here in D.C. - it comes from the sun beating on the earth and heating it. This causes the air in the valley to rise, and that pulls in cold air off the ocean. The water temperature in the Pacific Ocean offshore from Northern California is pretty much 13-15 degrees all the time, and has a huge effect on the climate - San Francisco is COLD in the summer and doesn't really warm up until the two valleys cool down, slowing the wind off the ocean, and allowing the city to warm up. The warmest months are September and October because of that. The same ocean condition that keeps San Francisco from having summer also keeps it from having winter. In the summer, though, you can have the following temperature gradients from the beach in San Francisco: 15 degrees at the beach, 20 degrees downtown, 25 degrees across the bay in Berkeley, 30 degrees east of the hills in Concord and Walnut Creek, and 35-38 degrees in Sacramento, over a distance of only about 120 km. As you can imagine this causes some REALLY fierce winds A ridge of high pressure builds up over the eastern Pacific in summer. This causes all the storms to go north, so essentially it does not rain from mid-April to mid-October. Six cool dry months and six cooler wet months is the pattern in northern coastal California. In the winter that ridge of high pressure breaks down and some really huge rainstorms can come roaring in, causing washouts, floods, and mudslides that disrupt highway and rail traffic. When these storms hit the Sierra Nevadas east of Sacramento it turns into snow that can fall 30 cm an HOUR. Other than hwy 70 to Portola, I-80 to Reno and US 50 to South Lake Tahoe, Caltrans doesn't even TRY to keep the other mountain passes (hwy 120, 4, 88, etc.) open - the passes close from late October into May. They don't plow in spring, they just let it melt. Chains are normally required over the mountains in winter (the California Highway Patrol will turn you around at the chain control points if you don't have them), and the railroad uses spreaders, flangers and in the worst situations rotary plows to keep the Donner Summit line open. Los Angeles has been a coastal desert for thousands of years. Most of the storms go north of there. They get their water from Hoover Dam in Nevada and from the parts of California where it DOES rain. And Hollywood is not a separate city; it is actually a district of Los Angeles (as are many other places out there), though the post office does call it Hollywood. Carleton -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James R. Frysinger Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 21:18 To: U.S. Metric Association Cc: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:50172] Re: Pleasant surprise, metric units used California is quite large, Pat, and it is much larger in the N-S direction than the E-W direction. It exhibits a large range of altitudes as well. The Rockies exert major orographic effects on the weather patterns. All this leads to wide range of climatology. Very large sections of the state are indeed desert lands, especially in the southern part of the state, and that includes the Los Angeles area. Wikipedia notes that the Los Angeles area averages only 35 days of precipitation per year. This is one of the reasons that the film industry took off there -- fewer shooting schedules ruined by rain! Hollywood is one of the cities in that LA metropolitan area. Jim On 2011-03-23 1944, Pat Naughtin wrote: > On 2011/03/24, at 01:51 , James R. Frysinger wrote: > >> I was pleasantly surprised to see metric units used in this UCLA website comparing Japan and California. Go to >> http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/japan/geography/overlay1.htm >> Then use the right arrow to progress through the next two frames. > > Dear Jim, > > Thanks for this reference. I was struck by the rainfall in Los Angeles at 350 millimetres per year. As a rule of thumb I have used 250 mm to mean desert in the past but I didn't know that Los Angeles was near this desert conditions level. > > Cheers, > > Pat Naughtin LCAMS > Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html > Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY > PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, > Geelong, Australia > Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 > > Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe. > > > > -- James R. Frysinger 632 Stony Point Mountain Road Doyle, TN 38559-3030 (C) 931.212.0267 (H) 931.657.3107 (F) 931.657.3108
