Microclimates

One of the things they tell you about this city is that it is foggy. The song may be "A Foggy Day in London town" but we all know that there hasn't been a lot of fog in London since the Clean Air Act and very very few peasoupers. Fog here is different. It's not that dirty icy fog we get occasionally or the mist that hangs in the Usk valley on October mornings. It is a wet white moist damp fog (that's three words for wet! but if Dickens can do it so can I) that blows in from the ocean and creeps its way up and around the hills. For the climate nerds amongst you, it's an advection fog caused when the warm tropical air over the Pacific hits the cold Californian waters. Sometimes it hangs around all day. In some areas it is an almost constant feature of the summer months I'm told.

But the good news is that that's not where I live. By sheer good luck and a bit of forward planning we managed to land up in the sunny bit of SF. Our west facing deck often seems to be at the centre of the only blue bit of sky around. Looking all around I can see the edge of the fog but it arrives last in our neighbourhood and leaves first. Today is once such day. The fog is currently receding and I can see that the Sunset district which of course is the fog belt is still engulfed. We now have blue skies and sunshine. A day to potter in the garden I think.

Then again - taken the next morning...