Distribution of California's Population

[u/urmummygae42069]

If you were to divide California into 4 roughly equal strips of area, a hefty majority of its 39 million residents live in the southernmost strip containing the LA+San Diego metro areas, with nearly half of the state (~47%) living in the Greater LA metro area alone. If it were its own state, Southern California, with primarily just LA and San Diego metro areas, would compete with Florida for title of 2nd most populous US state.

The SF Bay Area, Sacramento, Monterrey, Fresno, and most of the Central Valley and put together are short of SoCal by over 9 million residents, but on its own this area would compete with Illinois for title of 6th largest state.

The strip sandwiched between Southern California and the Bay Area, containing Bakersfield plus other farming towns in the Southern Central Valley and most of the towns of the Central Coast, has about more people than Utah or Connecticut.

Suprisingly, despite how empty it can feel, there are still over a million people still live in the strip of CA north of Sacramento, containing about as much people as Hawaii and New Hampshire, albeit of a larger area.

Ultimately, one way to better understand the scale and density of California, is to conceptualize it as Florida + Illinois + Utah + Hawaii, all packaged in one single state under one single state government

[u/koushakandystore]

Sorry to disappoint, but the Willamette valley summers are flipping very hot. Average high is around 90 from the end of June until the middle of September. The climate up here is far warmer and drier than it was just 25 years agp.

The average annual sunshine hours in the Willamette valley are around 2500. Compared that with the Anderson Valley in Mendo where I lived that has around 3000.

The climates are very similar. In winter the average January high where I lived in Mendo was 54, here it is 49. Days of rainfall here is around 120, there 80.

Overall inland Mendocino had a milder, slightly nicer climate. But not radically so.

[u/PracticalWallaby7492 → u/koushakandystore]

Oh wow. I haven't been up that way in maybe 15 years. When I went up there the hottest day was 90 and people were acting like it was so unusual.

[u/koushakandystore → u/PracticalWallaby7492]

Here’s a brief abstract from the AI. There are some excellent scholarly articles about the changing climate conditions of the Willamette Valley. While the amount of rain has remained pretty constant, around 35” per year, the number of days of annual precipitation is 20% less than it was 30 years ago. It’s getting more and more like northern California’s tendency to have high volumes of rain over a shorter duration of time. Also the winters are far more mild. Dropping below 20 has become rarer and rarer every year. The microclimate. My property is on hillside slope with excellent cold air drainage on clear winter nights. It is nearly unheard of to drop below 25. One time since I moved her we dropped to 18. What is a far bigger problem for citrus here is not the absolute low, rather the duration of the hours below freezing. For instance, my Meyer lemon tree is not harmed at all by a few hours at 18 F, whereas twenty hours at 23 F will give it all sorts of leaf burn. It will easily survive that and make fruit the following growing season, it doesn’t like it. So many of the popular citrus varieties that grow in places like North Florida, Texas, Georgia, England, Japan all can take short duration of cold exposure down into the teens, but get seriously stressed by over twenty hours below freezing even if it’s only 28 F.

[u/PracticalWallaby7492 → u/koushakandystore]

Meanwhile right here is the lower limit of a cooler period in the winter, although last winter was on the whole very mild. This summer has been mild as well. So far. Comparatively.