May Gray & June Gloom

The rumors about San Diego’s weather being *perfect* year-round are almost, but not quite, true. It’s a fact that most days are sunny; we really only have a handful of rainy days each year. Temperatures vary depending on where you live, because the San Diego area includes the coastal region, the inland region, and both mountains and desert. So while our average temperatures hover in the 60s during the winter and 70s during the summer, it’s much hotter the farther inland you go.

During the almost three years that we’ve lived here, we’ve had sunny, breezy weather with no rain every single day from roughly late June to mid-October. It gets cooler with some occasional rain in the winter months, usually from November until April. It’s not hard to get used to. At all.

There is a phenomenon here, though, widely known as “May Gray” and “June Gloom,” where people who live along the coast wake up to gray skies every day for several weeks between May and June. It’s sort of like a perpetual marine layer that blankets the ocean; the skies are gray, and the air is very damp. The funny part is, if you drive a couple of miles away from the ocean you’ll find sunny skies in no time.

Our old apartment was inland, so I’d wake up to the sun, drive to work along the coast and experience gray skies during the day, then drive back home to sunshine. Now that we live three miles from the beach (and my office is still on the coast), we’ve had May Gray every day this week.

I don’t mind the temporary grayness and chill in the air, but if we have to go without the sun then I wish we’d have a good thunderstorm! That’s another odd weather fact about San Diego, we don’t get thunderstorms. I’ve seen lightning and heard thunder twice in three years.