You're Getting Warmer

Growing up in L.A, I associated the Santa Ana winds with a very specific time of year. Two seasons were crossing paths, and the result was the mercilessly hot, dry days of summer's last hurrah and the dramatically cooler nights that signaled the onset of fall. I was back at school, dressed all wrong in woolly knee socks and plaid tartan (it took me a while to realize the Sears catalogue was geared to the climate of the whole country). But I sweated it out; I was going to wear my new duds, weather be damned. Every year I willed the temperature to change to accommodate my outfit, and pretty much every year it made a fool of me. But it was a ritual I looked forward to. By November the desert air was gone for good, maybe popping up a day here and there in February to remind us all that was indeed Southern California, and it could get warm at any moment. But contrary to mythology, Southern California kept its pact with winter, and I kept the knee socks.
All that seems to have changed. The change has crept up on me, like weight accumulated slowly over the years that suddenly adds up to 20 pounds. In these Santa Ana days, I realize with a start that we've been in the days since about April. That climatologically rare Mediterranean mix of desert and ocean elements has tilted drastically toward more desert and less ocean. The fog that actually rolls out in spring and summer and was once so dependable has become occasional. As a kid, I used to deplore the gray skies that kept June from breaking out into school-free summer; sitting home, waiting to go barefoot, I would be almost sullen. But that was a ritual, too, one I could set my watch by and that made life here so singular. Today I live relatively close to the water, a location that used to guarantee fog. No more. These days I've had to walk my dogs no later than 8 in the morning to avoid the heat fatigue that's always more than possible. The overcast that formed overnight and routinely wouldn't break up until noon the next day feels like the reality of another age.

I miss the contradiction of L.A. gloom. I miss the nativist satisfaction of watching tourists come here in December, wandering about haplessly in the chill and sometimes rain in their shorts and sandals. They thought this was the tropics? Serves them right. Don't they know semi-arid when they see it? People were paying for their willful misunderstanding of this city, which seemed only proper. L.A. is not a place that should be assumed or taken lightly. Our weather is one of the first things that sets outsiders straight.

Now...well, L.A. seems to be turning into the truly seasonless heaven, or hell, all the boosters and noir writers have been pushing all along. Thanks to global warming and whatever else, we're becoming the commercial we've never been. Of course that's on the outside. The inside is a story yet to tell.

This image was taken by Flickr userlierne and was used under Creative Commons license.