Even Californians complain about the weather. We should be ashamed of ourselves!
We have one of those potential kvetch times on-the-way. It’s the seasonal California May gray and June gloom. We’ll be waking to cloudy skies for most of the next week. They disappear by noon. This type of weather happens sporadically through summer.
In the case of coastal California, the offshore marine layer is typically propelled inland by a pressure gradient which develops as a result of intense heating inland, blanketing coastal communities in cooler air which, if saturated, also contains fog. The fog lingers until the heat of the sun becomes strong enough to evaporate it, often lasting into the afternoon during the “May gray” or “June gloom” period – Wikipedia
We’re over 10 miles inland. It’s not as bad as for coastal dwellers. Of course, they live on the California Coast. They’d better not complain. Ever. About anything.
This weather scenario wasn’t something we were looking for in Connecticut. Here, it shows up nicely on the forecast models. At the top is a BUFKIT readout from tonight’s 00Z GFS for KSNA, John Wayne Airport in nearby Santa Ana (Clicking the image will give you a much larger, much more readable look).
BUFKIT is an amazing program for visualizing weather data. It was developed at NOAA and is free, as is the data it uses.
With maps you see a large area for one specific time. With BUFKIT you see one specific place over a period of time. Go ahead–reread that.
There’s a lot going on, but what I’m looking at is at the bottom of the image. The lines are isohumes–lines of equal humidity. The cloud producing marine layer isn’t thick. On most days it only goes up 2,000 feet. It produces low, dense overcast. Sometimes there’s drizzle.
The marine layer forms in the evening and fades through the morning.
Every area has its own weather quirks. They all follow the laws of physics, often through interaction too complex for humans to fully understand. Take this afternoons clouds.
