What's it like where you live today?

@regarkecurb

@lisaviolet 86? That sounds so wonderful! Where?

@moonhat Inland San Diego. Lots of high thin clouds, though, no blue sky.

A white day.

@lisaviolet @moonhat 85 today here in west Texas. Beautiful cloudless sunny day.

@lisaviolet @moonhat San Diego is lovely. When I’ve visited for Comic-Con I’ve said that if I lived there I’d want a house with retractable walls so I could just open up to the beautiful climate.

@moondrake @moonhat My dad retired from Edwards Air Force base to the San Diego area.

My husband was born and raised here. I told him this was the best place I’ve ever lived and I’m not ever leaving. He did some vacay traveling (without me, because pets) and nothing really grabbed him.

Now that we’ve gotten older, he has no urge to leave, either.

Where we live is about fifteen/twenty miles inland and the weather can be pretty different than along the coast. It gets a lot hotter in the summer without the ocean breeze.

@lisaviolet @moondrake @moonhat

Which is cooler in summer? Coast? Or higher up?

I would think inland would be hotter.

@lisaviolet @moondrake @moonhat

In Hawaii, before indoor climate control and HVAC were commonplace and expected “improvements”, many rectangular houses were built with only three walls.

The fourth side was open. The other sides could be “opened up” also, with doors and windows adjusted to take advantage of the day’s or hour’s best light and air.

No fourth walls were needed, either for personally security and privacy (due to island culture), or for human comfort and climate safety.

Sounds like a bit of paradise lost to me.

/giphy Hawaii big island

@f00l @lisaviolet @moonhat Well, I’m as inland as it gets, high desert mesa in the Franklin Mountains at 3,900 feet. It gets beastly hot in the summer, plenty of days over 100. But just 90 miles away is a little town called Cloudcroft, NM, way up toward the top of the Sacramento Mountains amidst the coniferous Lincoln forest at 8,700 feet. And their average summer temperature is in the 60’s. So if the summer heat and searing desert wind starts to get to me, brisk mountain air and heavy forest is just an hour and a half away. If I want snow in the winter, it’s easy to visit. Weekend cabin rentals are cheap and many welcome giant dogs. Locals like to say that Cloudcroft is 9,000 feet above stress level.

@f00l @moondrake @moonhat It can be a lot hotter inland. The coast has the marine layer and on shore flow that keeps it cooler.

Inland, we can get the Santa Ana winds that blow from the desert to the west; those winds are usually hot and dry out the air.

@lisaviolet @moondrake @moonhat

Cloudcroft sounds lovely

I’ve been to the Gila Naval Forest in July.

Beyond lovely
I always fear for fire (over the decades, not at the moment) in places like that tho

@f00l They have fires in Lincoln Forest, you see evidence of them. But I don’t recall any of them getting out of control or threatening homes. Cloudcroft is really tiny, less than 700 population. It’s a genuinely magic place, you are driving up the mountain in desert terrain, you go through a short tunnel, and it’s a completely different world on the other side. You feel like you’ve gone through a worm hole.

@lisaviolet @moondrake @moonhat

National Forest.

Not Naval Forest.

Oh dear.

@ruouttaurmind

Won’t the tumbleweeds be at higher risk to simultaneously combust?

@PlacidPenguin As a matter of fact, yes. You are correct. However, I feel like I may spontaneously combust myself.

@ruouttaurmind

Was recently talking to somebody who encouraged me to visit Arizona.

@PlacidPenguin As you should. Sometime in October through April.

This is highly unusual for May. I was about 70 miles from home in a lowland desert area, so it was warmer there than home. Even still, very warm for May. Here at the house it’s a much more tolerable 101*.

@ruouttaurmind

How about sometime between May 1st and April 29th?

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They were explaining to me how even if it’s hot, it’s a tolerable heat.

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With certain traveling restrictions which I’d have, my experience would be limited.

@PlacidPenguin It’s quite tolerable in the northern towns throughout the summer. Even chilly at night. Here in the metro Phoenix area it’s usually pretty tolerable until July. Then… hot is hot. I don’t care how dry it is.

But since every building is air conditioned, it’s hardly noticeable. Usually. In 2017 our highest temp was 118* at the airport (121* at my house). My air conditioner ran pretty much nonstop from noon until well after sunset and still wasn’t able to keep up, managing to maintain about 84* inside.

@PlacidPenguin @ruouttaurmind It’s just broken 100 here in west Texas. Got to use my new AC for the first time (was on swamp cooler before). Thanks to antique Adobe walls and modern double paned windows, the cooler only runs off and on maybe 10-15 minutes in an hour to keep the house at a comfy 78. Any lower and I’m just too cold. Last month I didn’t need to run the HVAC and my electric bill was $36. I’m not looking forward to what it will look like in the summer.

@moondrake With the adobe, I bet it will still be pretty reasonable. Last summer my former roommate was unemployed for the entire summer, and was fond of cranking down the thermostat when I left for work. My highest bill was $428. I nearly had a stroke when I opened that bill.

@ruouttaurmind I definitely get the “former”.

@moondrake @ruouttaurmind

At least it wasn’t a heat stroke.

@ruouttaurmind

Ands that’s why we can’t have unmelted things.

@f00l

I OFFERED to send you snow.

Of course, I also offered some to Narf…

@sammydog01 Send us some. No rainfall more than spitting on windshields so far this spring. My plants are struggling because I don’t water often enough. I was visiting a friend in Austin a couple of weeks ago. I made them laugh because I was telling them that when I got out of bed a couple of hours before them, I saw that it was raining. I was really torn because I wanted to get a shower and make myself some tea, but I didn’t want to miss the rain. I said to myself “it’s Austin, it’ll rain for more than 5 minutes”. It ended up raining all day. I got to sit on their back porch for several hours with my tea and a book and watch the rain, something I hardly ever get to do at home

@mfladd So jealous. We’re in monsoon season, where we get 90% of our rain for the year. It rains for 10 minutes every other night, and still hits 108in the afternoons. At least it’s nice in the mornings.

@mfladd

Pretty close to the weather by me.

Then again, the storm patterns have been passing through your area first.

@PlacidPenguin That forecast looks perfect from here.