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California Mystique
Wed Jun 01, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, commentator Heather Liston learns a lesson in the California Mystique:
About 10 years ago, my mother, a native of Buffalo, moved to Los Angeles. She called one night and told me she was cold. It had taken her awhile to admit it, or maybe even to believe it. She prided herself on her descent from a Canadian pioneer. And she loved the Buffalo snowstorms in which she grew up and the ones in Indiana where she raised her family -- the kind where the drifts are so high you can't open the front door, the kind where one neighbor goes into town and picks up food for everybody because it's too daunting for most people to bundle up and drive the 10 miles to the supermarket.
"Is it cold all day?" I asked, wondering about all those Hollywood movies in which everyone is scantily clad. "Or does the chill just set in at night?"
She said she had not yet figured it out. "One day, I'll go out and it will be windy and cold and someone will say, 'Well, what do you expect for September 21st?' and then another day it will be dry and still and somebody will say, 'Well, of course it is. It's November 1st, after all.'" As if they all understood what to expect and she just couldn't crack the code.
In Indiana, we pretty much knew that the summer would be brutally hot and the winter would be brutally cold. But Midwestern conditions come in a cycle you get used to. It wasn't until my mother encountered the mysteries of California weather that she ever had to ask for help.
The Weather Notebook receives funding from Subaru of America and the National Science Foundation.
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