Fall, and Winter in Los Angeles. . . Really

When I first moved to Los Angeles, lo, more years ago than I'd like to admit, it was five years before I bought a coat. I remember an early experience of the Christmas season here, when it was 80 degrees as I drove along the Wilshire Corridor. And it seemed to me then, that the weather in tinsel town was without seasons, always sunny. The title of that song, "It Never Rains in Southern California" seemed entirely true.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pyC7WnvLT4

I guffawed at those native born folk who wore parkas in January or February and complained about the "cold". Cold? I had been thinking about moving to California for about four or five years before I actually did it. The last straw for me was walking between my law school's building on campus located I understood to be on the highest point of Queens, New York to have lunch in the college cafeteria one winter's day. It was not a long way. I had on a hat and a scarf and a coat and my nose felt like it would fall off. I have vivid memory of saying to myself, when I graduate and get licensed in New York, I am leaving town for the temperate climes of Los Angeles. I did not say it exactly like that, naturally, between shivers and verbal emphasis of complaint.  And so I did.


Having become inured to this temperate climate, I began to realize that those who said California had no seasons were wrong. I bought a coat. To be sure the shift is more subtle, except when we have the weeks of torrential rains as we did in 1983 that nearly took away the Santa Monica pier. Palm trees stay green all year long and only some people have annuals growing and shedding  and being reborn on their lawns to cue the changes. But these last two days remind me that there is a certain change. Spring is usually just cooler than summer and spring and summer are mostly all day to day sun. But around now, something new is added. Not a cold, but a chill, and an overcast that is mighty different from the June gloom. And because most buildings here aren't as insulated as in the east, any chill makes a space colder than the temperature might intimate. There'll be if not full on rain, more drizzle. If the sun comes out it is late in the afternoon and after an hour or two, the marine layer is coming in, thicker than at other times of the year.  All spring and summer to now, my windows have stayed open well into the night; but now about six or so, it is a little cool without a sweater and I'll shut them, before the now earlier dark is upon me.  Where I have made time to sit outside for at least a bit to watch the sun go down and the birds twitter wildly before settling down for the night, the idea is not as attractive now.


I have been cleaning out the cat hair in the old wall heater and located the space heater. Forty eight degrees here feels cold, where for an East Coast dweller, we look like wimps. It never fails that someone who moved here years ago loses the stalwart resistance to anything under 60 degrees.  If I were a bear, I would hibernate from now till spring. I do not like the short days. I feel very much like Persephone kidnapped to Hades. But IF I have to do winter, this is the best place to do it. There will be some sudden heat waves, even in the winter, like that Christmas of 80s back in the 80s.


Actually, the weather person has said that we are looking at an increase in temperature and a return of the sun for the weekend.  My beach chair is still in my car, just in case.