(no subject)

[serai]

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This weather is seriously freaking me out. This is JULY weather.

I've lived in SoCal for most of my life, and in the last decade I've come to no longer recognize it. The memories I have of huddling around the oven when I was a kid to warm up my clothes before getting dressed for school, of week-long rainstorms, of actually knowing when the divide between winter and spring took place - those memories are describing another place. It's like I grew up somewhere else that used to be Los Angeles, and this has replaced it.

I hope I find a way to leave sometime in the next few years, because I really don't want to live in the hellish oven that SoCal is on its way to becoming. There's a fucking REASON I don't live in Death Valley, thank you. I sure as shit have no interest in moving there without budging an inch to do it.

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Comments

[shirebound]

actually knowing when the divide between winter and spring took place

You're so right!

[addie71.livejournal.com]

The weather is changing all over and it's not a good thing, but at least where I am we still have winter and summer. Spring and fall are withering away, but they're still here, too. *knocks on wood*

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I envy you. Enjoy that winter, because one day you won't have that, either, no matter where you live.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I think there was a time when there were actual winters where I am, too. Now we have maybe 2 months of winter (still too much for me). When we were all squawking about the horrible winter we had 2 years ago here? Well, many old timers were like, heh, that was NORMAL back in the day. This year we've had like 2 snowfalls maybe, only a few inches, nothing that even really disrupted travel (even for me and I'm phobic about driving in even a tiny bit of snow).

As for LA, you couldn't pay me to live there, especially since a/c seems a luxury there (didn't used to need it). I only know because most of my family comes from CA and many still live in the Southern CA area and I remember going there many times of many times of year, climate was definitely different. Last time I was visiting my friend in LA, I actually nearly got sick from the heat in her apartment (she had no a/c, not even a good fan). Also, I don't like parched environments. But there was certainly a time when So CA was considered paradise with good reason! Shoot, I would move out there in a heartbeat if it was still the way it used to be!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

In Steve Martin's wonderful flick L.A. Story, there's a joke about the weather in which a boringly dressed weatherman with a boring demeanor and a boring voice points out that the temperature will be 72 degrees - just like every day. That's the SoCal I remember, the one so many people moved out here for in the 50's and 60's. Sunny and WARM, not hellishly hot. A nice comfortable warmth that just meant you weren't going to walk around with cold toes. That you could sit outside in the yard and read a book for hours and be comfortable doing it.

Now I have to plan when I walk to the store to make sure it's not on a day so hot I might faint. I can't wear a tank top anymore because it's TOO HOT to wear one outside and I might burn - and I've NEVER had a propensity for burning. I just got darker in the summer.

I miss that California. But I'm glad I won't be around to see the world my nieces and nephews are going to have to live in. (Man, I always thought I'd think that about the culture we're living in. I never dreamed I'd be saying it about the damn PLANET.)

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Apparently this was the warmest January globally on record, and 2015 was the warmest year globally on record. I know our summer (here in Seattle) last year was also the average warmest, and it f***ing sucked. I do not see the attraction in it being too hot to sleep comfortably, let alone not be able to walk around during the day without wilting in a puddle of sweat.

Now the spring bulbs are sprouting and blooming up here...in February. That's supposed to happen about a month from now. Pleasant around here for now, but...a little more winter would've been okay, and I dread what summer's going to be like if this is the trend. And I definitely feel for California--it's been rough down there. They say the El Niño pattern might mean more rainfall for CA later in spring. Let's hope!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Well, it's raining today and tomorrow, which is nice. I'm definitely enjoying it. So there's that. But yeah, it's been nasty, and it's going to get hot again in a few days. *sigh*

I'm starting to wonder if maybe all the incidences of colony collapse are less about poisoning and more about the change in climate. Bees are sensitive creatures, so perhaps they started feeling it before we did, or feel it much more strongly, or whatever. I do know that one of the really alarming developments in climate change is the slow northward migration of grapevine cultivation. Some varietals of wine grapes just don't do well in California anymore, which terribly sad. Now there are vineyards in Oregon and even Washington state, where wine grapes never used to grow because it was too damn cold. Some experts are calling wine grapes the canary in the coal mine for food crops, since their extreme sensitivity means they fail long before other kinds of food crops. In another ten years, there'll be vineyards in Canada, and eventually (unless some miracle puts a stop to it) we will simply no long have wine grapes at all. (The same thing is happening to sugar maples - their sap season is getting shorter and shorter, and eventually we will not have any real maple syrup at all.)

*sigh*

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

There are definitely more vineyards cropping up in Oregon and Washington nowadays than when I was growing up here. I doubt it's just for tourism reasons; climate is surely part of it. I can imagine a future when Canada is where fruits and vegetables are mainly grown, and southern and central California have become part of the Southwest desert. Sobering. Especially since people are probably going to move north by the millions, and swamp THIS area with overcrowding and traffic and skyrocketing house prices. Ack. No one wins.

True about a lot of the local species, too. Honeybees aren't native to North America anyway (which didn't occur to me until someone pointed it out recently!), but we do use them a lot, so they're still important. And even the native pollinators (bumblebees and others) are surely being affected by climate change and droughts. Apparently animals like snowshoe hares, who change fur color during winter, are becoming preyed upon more heavily now because white fur stands out against the snowless backdrop. Sigh. Bleh.