It’s an Interesting Town
With an average of 70.5° Fahrenheit (21° C), or what a lot of people would call room-temperature, San Diego is a very pleasant place to live. They possess 70 miles of nice ocean beaches; support fines of $250 for not taking your Christmas lights down by February 2nd; and maintain a law which states that it’s illegal to shoot jack rabbits from the back of a streetcar.
As chief producer of avocados in the country, it’s no surprise that San Diego also has the most farms (7,000) of any city, in the entire country. San Diego is a Dry County, but not in the sense that you can’t buy alcohol there—it must import 85% of its water, totaling almost 170,000,000 gallons a day. And because water is so precious, a local law states that you are not allowed to swim in any of the lakes in San Diego, which are all artificial.
The best word to describe San Diego is “idyllic”, which despite its population of 1.37 million people, still manages to maintain a small town atmosphere.
No complaints about the Climate
The U.S. Weather Bureau describes San Diego’s weather as nearly “perfect” and the best in the United States. Holiday Magazine agreed, describing it as “only area in the United States with perfect weather.” There is even a “Pleasant Weather Rating Service Poll” which designated San Diego as “the best year-round weather in the nation”, and “the second best weather in the world”.
Talk about unbearably pleasant
Imagine having to spend your days walking around in cut-offs and tank tops, shod in flip-flops, and having no idea what an overcoat is. Oh, the suffering of those poor people, when the first sign of winter is when the temperature starts to dip below 70. Even their advertising video shows how relentlessly pleasant it is.
Web Cameras
For having a look around, there’s no need to go any further than http://www.sundiegolive.com/. It sports half a dozen webcams, two of which are mounted on Tom Ham’s Lighthouse, that automatically change view, zoom, and angles every few seconds. Another pair is located at the Bali Hai restaurant on Shelter Island. They, too, alter their own views and scene selections. The last pair is located at the Cabrillo National Monument, and are automated as well.
Being Informed
As always, weather.com provides daily reports, broken down into hourly if you need that; depending on the time of the year you can get holiday reports, too, such as Christmas; they also provide 5-day and 10-day predictions, notes about what to expect on the weekend, and live updates of growing systems that could pose a threat. They even include a graphic, which tracks the Sun and Moon in their journeys across the sky, and shows the sunrise and sunset times. And being a farming-oriented community, they also include a farm weather report.
Naturally AccuWeather has a reasonably broad array of information including the video forecast, weather radar for the area, and long-range predictions of major Continental Systems that could impinge on the area. They also provide eight or more clickable links detailing the interesting whether that’s going on in the country, travel forecasts, and in one case, an intergalactic observation. And if Forensic Weather is your thing, they have that too!
One last thing
It doesn’t have to cost an arm-and-a-leg to enjoy San Diego. Going to the beach is free where you can swim, or surf as the notion strikes you. Watching the sunset on the ocean can be enjoyed from La Jolla Cove. And nothing says that you have to buy anything while strolling through Seaport Village window-shopping, or the Gaslamp Quarter, enjoying architecture, specialty shops, boutiques, and art galleries.
If you happen to be in town on the first Wednesday of each month you can head down to the Reuben H Fleet Science Center in the evening where they set up telescopes outside so the public and get a good look at the stars for free. Go inside for a digital planetarium experience and an IMAX film included with admission!
You can go for a jog in the many parks, or along the numerous trails, or pop down to the U.S. Olympic Training Center for a free tour. Or visit Torrey Pines State Beach to watch the acrobatic hang-gliders perform miraculous feats of daring. Or you can simply grab your rollerblades and head down Mission Beach Boardwalk. Unless skateboarding is your thing; then it’s Ocean Beach Skate Park for you.
If perfect weather is your goal, come to San Diego.