Climate
California's climate varies widely, from arid to subarctic, depending on latitude, elevation, and proximity to the coast. Coastal and Southern parts of the state have a Mediterranean climate, with somewhat rainy winters and dry summers. The influence of the ocean generally moderates temperature extremes, creating warmer winters and substantially cooler summers, especially along the coastal areas.
The state is subject to coastal storms during the winter. Eastern California is subject to summertime thunderstorms caused by the North American monsoon. Dry weather during the rest of the year produces conditions favorable to wildfires. California hurricanes occur less frequently than their counterparts on the Atlantic Ocean. Higher elevations experience snowstorms in the winter months.
Floods are occasionally caused by heavy rain, storms, and snowmelt. Steep slopes and unstable soil make certain locations vulnerable to landslides in wet weather or during earthquakes.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of California
Famous quotes containing the word climate:
“Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)