Climate of Southern California 



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skies, bracing and health-giving. I have been drifting 

 in the Santa Catalina Channel in a dead calm when I 

 suddenly heard a roar far away to the west, and have seen 

 a ridge of whitecaps coming on like a tidal wave, the 

 approach of the morning wind. Hardly has the west 

 wind died down in the afternoon when it begins to blow 

 in an opposite direction, and all night the land along- 

 shore has a breeze that sweeps down from the verdure- 

 clad mountains. 



Each day, then, in summer, Southern California has 

 two distinct and opposite winds: one from the ocean, 

 and one at night from the mountains and vast arid 

 region which surrounds the land to the east, a rare com- 

 bination that cannot but have its effect as a vigorous 

 and health-giving tonic. In twenty years I have seen 

 but two gales which were alarming to some people in 

 the San Gabriel Valley, and neither one equalled the 

 heavy north-easters I have known on the Atlantic coast 

 and the furious wind squalls of the intercontinental 

 region. Hurricanes and cyclones are unknown in South- 

 ern California. Four or five years will pass without a 

 thunder-storm, and the town of Pasadena has been struck 

 by lightning but twice to my knowledge in twenty years. 

 These phenomena are not a part of the normal condi- 

 tions of things ; they are the rare exceptions. 



There is a feature of the Pacific coast that many 

 writers and authors credit with having a decided in- 

 fluence upon the climate of the Pacific coast. This is 

 the so-called Black Current of Japan, the Kuro Shiwo, 



