Friday, September 18, 2020

California Or Alabama?

Wife kitteh and I have two recurring disagreements.

Wife kitteh wants a pool. Our lot isn't designed for a pool, so adding one would be very difficult.

I want to move to the South. Wife kitteh doesn't want to live in the heat and humidity.

I've argued that if we lived in or around Fairhope, AL, we'd have plenty of land (and money!) for a pool. We'd also have green instead of brown. I find San Diego depressing after about June 1. Everything is dead and dried for months on end. I think that's why we have all those wildfires, but I'm told I hate SCIENCE, so who knows.

Today, I went to NOAA's excellent climate data site and got results for Fairhope and Miramar NAS. Here are the results, using daily maximums only.


You'll have to click on it to read the labels.

I've been complaining lately that we've had bayou weather without the bayou. That is, San Diego has been hot and humid, but still dry and dead. Why stay here if we're going to get Dixie weather anyway?

Well, to be perfectly honest, the big difference is consistency. Yes, San Diego has some brutal days, ones that are worse than the Gulf Coast. What Bama has is consistency. Come May, you're facing hot, humid weather without a break until October. There's one particular two-week stretch you can see in the data, right at the end of June, where San Diego had lovely days with highs around 75. Fairhope was in the mid-80s the whole time.

In late August, there was a gap in the data, so I don't trust that stretch, but it's still illustrative.

It might have been more useful to plot the delta between the two lines, but I've lost interest in this project. We're not going to move no matter what now. One of our sons and his wife bought a house and grandchildren are on the horizon. Even the Marines couldn't get wife kitteh out of San Diego now.

Sigh, y'all.

4 comments:

Ohioan@Heart said...

As President Clinton said, “I feel your pain.”

I have been on and off whining about leaving CA since before Mrs Ohioan and I retired. If we sold our house here, we could get basically anything we’d want just about anywhere we’d want. But I know it is a waste of time and energy. Because?

We have 4 grandkids all here in San Diego County, and now a fifth is under construction (due in Oct). Mrs Ohioan isn’t going anywhere, unless our kids move away. They have talked about it, but I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.

K T Cat said...

Let me just say two words to you: "Family compound."

You could build one in almost any state. As I understand it, a state of paranoia is helpful.

You're welcome.

Ohioan@Heart said...

Oh sure, a family compound would be trivial if we all moved to one place. The problem is that the grandkid's parents are working, and their jobs are here.

Foxfier said...

*ignores all other factors because: BABIES*

Congratulations. :D