Weather and seasons in Los Angeles
The weather in California is good. This is enough to plan a trip for a person accustomed to European weather. We can stop at this.
Those interested in details can read on.
Seasons in Los Angeles (California)
Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate. Summers are dry, warm and long; there is no winter in the European sense. There are two seasons – dry from April to October (summer) and wet from November to March (winter). There is no pronounced autumn and spring.
There is practically no rain in summer. An umbrella is not needed for sure. It may not rain at all from late April to late October. Sometimes in the summer there may be several tropical rains, which will be brought in by a cyclone from Mexico, but this does not happen every year. The daytime temperature in summer ranges from + 21-22 to +40, average about + 25-27. At the same time, +40 in Los Angeles with low humidity is easier to tolerate than +28 in New York, where the humidity is often 80% in summer. Evenings in summer are more often cool than warm, at +30 in the afternoon after sunset it can get colder up to +16. Many ladies complain about this, they either have to change clothes for the evening from a light summer dress to something warmer, or carry a windbreaker or sweater.
Temperatures in Los Angeles are highly dependent on location. The temperature difference can be 15 degrees at a distance of 15 kilometers – in Sherman Oaks (LA region) in the San Fernando Valley it will be +35, and at the same time on the coast in Malibu it will hardly reach +20. In general, here, the farther from the ocean, the hotter.
The temperature is also strongly influenced by the direction of the wind – from ocean to land or vice versa. In May and June, the ocean has not yet warmed up, the air above it cools down, fog forms, and due to the pressure drop it is blown away by the wind to the already warmed land. This fog thickens before or immediately after sunset and penetrates up to 30 km inland. At the same time, humidity increases and it gets colder. It looks like a wall of dense fog that moves quite quickly from the ocean side. In the morning, it can hang until 12-13 hours, until the sun disperses it. It can hang over the coast all day and the sun may not be there for several days in a row. These June fogs are called June Gloom – Gloomy June, so beach lovers in LA in June may be disappointed. By July, the ocean warms up, and the fog becomes less. Even in early May, there may be more sun on the shore than in June.
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Beach Holidays in Los Angeles
Beach vacation in LA is a topic for another conversation. It should only be noted that the ocean never warms up above +24. It is warmest in the hottest months – August and the first three weeks of September. The usual temperature for these months is + 20-21. In June, the water is rarely higher than + 18-19.
It happens that the wind blows in the opposite direction – from land to ocean. This happens when a high pressure area hovers over southern California. Then the Santa Ana wind brings hot and dry air from the deserts surrounding LA. Santa Ana happens at any time of the year, in summer it raises the temperature above +40, in winter it can jump over +30. When Santa Ana blows, the danger of forest fires is greatly increased due to humidity below 10%.
Winter in Los Angeles
Winter in Los Angeles, as elsewhere, comes suddenly: at the end of October – the first half of November, the first cold rains, brought by cyclones from the north, begin. The first serious rains of the season are always an event. A week before the expected rain, the headlines appear in the news “A STORM is approaching us!” STORM “. The “STORM” means the most common rain, which in Europe can pass five in a week.
Despite the warnings, local drivers thrash during the first rain almost as often as their Kiev or Moscow counterparts during the first snow. Although the tires do not need to be changed, the roads become a little slippery due to the plaque accumulated over the long 7 months without rain. It mixes with rainwater and covers the road with a thin slippery film. And over the summer, drivers forget how to drive in the rain. The rain usually ends the next day. Very rarely, it can drag on for several days.
After the first autumn rains, they can go quite regularly 2-3 times a month throughout the winter, this is a historical norm. Sometimes they can go up to 2 times a week. It’s already a very wet winter. This is often the case when El Niño comes, a natural phenomenon in which the water in the South Pacific is warming higher than usual. It comes with a cycle of 5-7 years. El Niño is replaced by his sister La Niña with drier and cooler winters (on the contrary, the ocean warms up less than usual).
Daytime temperatures in winter range from +8 the next day after a cold rain to +30 if Santa Ana is blowing. The usual daytime temperature in winter is + 16-18. It can be quite cold at night, up to +5 in the city after rain, and in some areas located in the foothills and valleys, it can drop to -1-2 in the morning, but this is very rare. In winter, there are often whole weeks without rain and with temperatures above +20 and you can spend a day on the beach, the water, however, will be +15 degrees.
In recent years, this has happened more and more often, the rains begin later and later, and in winter there are less of them – global warming is felt. Due to the lack of rain in the last 4-5 years, there is a drought here, the state government urges residents to conserve water.
The weather in the rest of California is generally similar – cooler by the ocean, hotter inland, but there are differences – it is cold and snowy in the mountains in winter, it is cooler in the north and it rains much more often, in the deserts on the border of Nevada and Arizona it is very dry and hot …
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