Frisco Fog
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A California summer, sunny and warm, right? Well, guess again. Here's Steve Tokar.

"The coldest winter I ever spent, said Mark Twain, was a summer in San Francisco. He was right. Walking through Golden Gate Park on a fresh June morning, I carry a sweater and windbreaker and keep a sharp eye to the west for the first tendrils of malignant grey fog that will inevitably clomp in on giant toad feet and blot out the afternoon sun.

Our favorite local sport is laughing at summer tourists as they shiver in their shorts and tank tops, drilled by an icy Pacific wind. Welcome to California, suckers. Wanna buy a nice warm sweatshirt? Thats how it was until last year.

Oh, we had our usual festive fogworks display on July Fourth. But then something went wrong. The fog went away. The wind died. It got warm. And stayed that way. My windbreaker hung in the closet. My sweater lay forgotten in a drawer. My wife and I found ourselves in shorts and tank tops, eating cool outdoor lunches of yogurt and summer fruit. We left our windows open. We bought a fan. In the evenings, we joined our bewildered neighbors on the street in the strangely still air, blinking at the unfamiliar points of light overhead. Those are stars, we reminded each other. People back east see them all the time. Sure, but in August? I began to miss the fog. My blood was too thick. I longed for the cool relief of a proper San Francisco summer."

Weather Notebook commentator Steve Tokar will most likely see things get back to normal at his home in the bay area this summer. Our show is funded by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive and by the National Science Foundation.