Meanwhile in Los Angeles...
In much of the country, an unusually dry season has created dangerous fire conditions. But in West Los Angeles, unusually humid and foggy conditions have set in. Gardeners are reportedly losing plants to mildew— almost unheard of in "sunny" Southern California. But it has been predicted: global climate change is making Pacific coastal communities wetter.
For comparison, this morning humidity at LAX was reported at 81%. In Cedar City, Utah, it was 13%.
The year hasn't been much foggier than usual. If anything, we've had lighter humidity than the "June gloom" we usually get starting in April.
One of the things that astonished me when I moved to Santa Monica 27 years ago from Riverside, a semi-arid, nearly desert climate about 70 miles to the east, was that you couldn't sit outside on summer evenings without a reasonably heavy coat. Polartec 200 was about the minimum, and you'd often need more. I've been trying to learn the summer constellations for 10 years now and never have any luck because we almost always have fog or low clouds during the evening. I haven't seen a significant change in this weather pattern since I've been here.
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Santa Monica, located as it is adjacent to both ocean and mountain, has a mini-climate more like Malibu than the coast to the south. Though historical humidity data is hard to come by, anecdotal reports suggest that the rest of LA is getting more humid. This includes my own experience of 25 years in various parts of the South Bay, my wife's forty-something years in Venice and Culver City, and my former landlady, the one who lost her flowers to mildew this year, who moved to Westchester over 50 years ago and is an avid gardener. June is always a foggy month-- but the hot weather months-- March (when it's sunny and not rainy), April, sometimes May, and July thru September-- used to be relatively dry.
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