I think the migration out of the bay will make it a more reasonable place to live. We do have some of the best weather in the world. I'm going to gamble on staying.
> We do have some of the best weather in the world.
Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think.
Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :)
>Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :)
Yeah that part is bad. Not sure how to rate CA in general when you account for this as the wild fires only started getting crazy recently. For most of my life overall the fires weren't a problem.
>Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think.
Scientifically it is actually rated as some of the best in terms of closest to something like room temperature throughout the year. It's a climate zone called the mediterranean climate zone. It exists in a few places in the world.
I think it's unlikely to turn out like Detroit, and I say that as someone who wants to leave the region.
The region will continue to have many of its best qualities: good weather, (relatively) diverse culture, access to nature, and good employment prospects. The biggest issue with the region is the high cost of living, but any relief in housing costs will only make the area more appealing again. There's a high floor.
San Diego is right in the range that you are describing. Average highs in August are ~75. I'm biased though since I lived in San Diego for a couple of years and have never lived in or near San Francisco. Inland is much hotter in San Diego though.
We're talking about the same SF from this summer where the heat waves were just as bad as SoCal? California climate change now means you're going to get heat waves pretty much everywhere.
I'm inclined to agree, if you can be near enough to the ocean to tame the summer heat.
SFBA winters are kinda miserable IMHO. It's not rust belt snow bad, but consistently cold and wet for months isn't exactly ideal.
And SF-proper regularly being fogged in renders too many nights useless WRT enjoying the outdoors, year-round. It's almost pointless to have something like a rooftop deck or outdoor patio. It'll all corrode and rot before you get sufficient use of it.
San Mateo manages to escape most of the negative fog effects though, I enjoyed living on the hill by 92 and Hillsdale Blvd. We'd regularly watch the apocalyptic fog stall @ Skyline while enjoying dinner outside on our deck.
For the south bay it's not 3 months of the year, 100F lasts for like 2-3 weeks at most (actually realistically it's more like 95-100). It's the same for socal. Socal has about 2-3 weeks in the summer where the temps become sweltering.
Even within LA the temperatures vary, the closer you are to the coastline the better the weather.
I know because I grew up in the south bay, I lived in SF for 2 years and lived in LA for 10 years.
What's overall better in socal is that the winters are much more mild. In the south bay the worst you can get is ice in the morning and really cold nights. Socal winters just has a very slightly lower temperature than spring.
Not trying to say NorCal has better weather than Socal. I'm saying NorCal has some of the best weather in the world despite it not having the "perfect" weather that Socal has. The entire CA coast line is afterall still in the mediterranean climate zone.
Hopefully this isn't like detroit.