Re(2): Back here, at 40°C
- Subject: Re(2): Back here, at 40°C
- From: B* G*
- Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 23:26:38 -0700
sean@support.net writes:
>
>When the interior valley heats up, that mass of air rises. The vacuum
>caused by this rising air pulls air in from somewhere else - the only
>available place is the Golden Gate. This pulls the fog onshore and into
>the delta. Some of our local areas (San Francisco, Berkeley, Richmond,
>etc.) lie right in the path of this pull and therefore tend to end up
>with
>foggy days during this effect. If the fog invades the interior valley
>enough to have a cooling effect, then this lessens the 'pull' and there
>fore the fog effect. Ultimately the valley will warm again and start the
>whole thing over.
I wonder if a similar situation near Monterey is why we end up with fog a
lot as well. The Salinas Valley is about 100 miles long, very broad
(probably 5 miles or so wide for most of its length, but is at the mouth
about 20 miles wide), opens directly to the sea (the mouth is between the
Santa Lucia and Gabilan Ranges), and gets quite hot around San Ardo (the
south end of the valley). This valley is where probably most of the salad
greens are grown in the US (IIRC, i forget, but it's a pretty lucrative
agricultural area....the southern end hosts vineyards).
It's not uncommon for it to get to the 100 degrees Farenheit around San
Ardo, and to be about 60 degrees Farenheit or so on the coast (where there
is fog) int he summer. The low mountains that end on the Monterey
Peninsula seem to block some of the fog (you can see it trying to get over
the tops of the mountains), so there's often a sunny spot along the south
east corner of Monterey bay, near the Naval Post Graduate School (Formerly
the Del Monte Hotel). This probably explains why the hotel was built
there.....it's often warmer in that area than further west along the
peninsula, or further north along the coast.
My town, Marina, lies in the path of most of the fog. It's pretty reliable
that we'll get fog in summer, and it's often gloomy. The fog is also the
reason that Castroville (closest town to the north of Marina) grows 90% of
the artichokes sold in the US (in fact, at the very northern edge of my
town, there's an artichoke field).
The fog doesnt penetrate too far down the Salinas Valley most days,
usually it reaches about 30 miles or so down the valley, but retreats to
about 10 miles in or so (to where the city of Salinas is). In fact, as my
family and I were driving from Gino's (a very nice Italian Restaurant
along highway 68) today, we could see the heavy and thick fog bank a
couple of miles west of us (it was sunny where we were).
____________________________________________
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Modern Goth: a vegetarian pretending to be a vampire.
