Straight from the Pacific

We were on our way back to the car from the ponds on Monday night and standing in the river bed when I spotted this weather phenomenon:

I was so excited it actually showed up with the zoom on my phone! Having lived here for just shy of 13 years, I had often wondered why I could be in my warm and sunny yard on a weekend morning, decide to take Mabel out to breakfast, only to arrive just over that ridge there to find it cold and and drizzly at my favorite dog-friendly restaurant! I've even wrapped my freezing body in muddy dog blankies to be able to get my breakfast down! For years it was just one of those things that make me go Hmmmmm.

Just over that ridge is the area of Northern Glendale known as Montrose. Years later I would realize that, if you are there on a clear and often breezy day, say sitting on the patio at Coffee Bean on the corner of Ocean View and Honolulu, you can actually see the glistening Pacific! It turns out, there really is an ocean view on Ocean View!! But I never really thought of that in terms of weather...

Twice this past year, when I was driving with the bestie (a witness!!!), just as we dropped down the mountain into the Crescenta Valley, there was that smokey look in the air. We slowed, peered all around, rolled down the windows to smell, turned down the radio to listen. But there was no flames to see, no smokey smell, and no helicopters.  This was NOT a fire... and then we smelled it... Ocean!

Suddenly, it all made sense... when the fog rolls in from the ocean, it takes the path of least resistance. While it can make it over our mountains, more often, we see it come from due west in our little valley. But the foggy fingers have a straight shot to Glendale from the ocean via that corridor, even though it's some 20 miles away. That's why the climate is so different just a few miles away! Plants that grow there, don't grow here. And it's the source of those drizzly mornings over there. And it sometimes helps cool our little valley down as it did Monday night: high of 98, low of 55!