Deep winter in San Francisco

Even though there are some palm trees in San Francisco, it is a temperate climate, not a tropical one. I usually say that it has two seasons, spring and fall. The temperature lives in the 50's - 60's range. Hot summer days are rare; the coldest I have known it to be is about 42 degrees. In January. At night.

It is probably truer to say that it has a rainy season and a dry season. And for a Northeasterner like myself, the miracle is that the rainy season, even though it happens during "winter", produces the greenest time of the year. It's chillier, but the flora are very happy. And with an abundance of reds and violets that you rarely see back on the original colonial coast.

My first visit here was the Valentine's Day weekend in 1988. And one of the things I saw that has remained in my memory was a bunch of cala lilies growing "wild" on the street in front of the bed and breakfast we stayed in.


San Francisco is not paradise. It is very expensive, full of nut jobs (some of whom are in charge of the government) and lots of its people are not well. It has bad streets and bad neighhborhoods. But something about it, especially in winter, when the places I spent the first four decades of my life are dead, dark and covered with snow and ice, remains magical to me. Sometimes I still can't believe I get to live here.

_________________________________