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Community Corner

Weather Report with a Twist: August 5-7

Enjoy a hyper-local weather report from a Castro Valley backyard weather station. In Texas, it's too hot for "Hogs!" Micro-climates vs. macro-climates.

I was talking with a co-worker who lives in Dallas and she told me it was only 104˚, down from 108˚ the day before. I just got a first-person report that it's 112˚ and going up to 115˚ on Friday. The Dallas weather graphic I grabbed yesterday is already out of date.

Texas and the middle part of the country has been under what is called a Heat Bubble or Head Dome or a MegaHellOnEarth for several weeks. I read that it got up to 123˚ in Minneapolis last week. That's one humongous High Pressure System.

That's CRAZY!! 

This caught my eye today: Hog-hunting TV series delayed due to Texas heat

Find out what's happening in Castro Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Texas heat is forcing the A&E television network to call "time out" on a new series about hunting hogs. I guess they would have ended up hunting bacon. Can anybody get a TV show?

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Again this weekend, Castro Valley is going to have very mild mid-70s temperatures and sunny skies, so enjoy the weekend.

Find out what's happening in Castro Valleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Weather Facts of the Week:

Texas has a macroclimate, where it's hot everywhere.

But Castro Valley and the rest of the SF Bay Area have microclimates...

San Francisco is a city with microclimates and submicroclimates. Due to the city's varied topography and influence from the prevailing summer marine layer, weather conditions can vary by as much as 9°F (5°C) from block to block.

The region as a whole, known as the San Francisco Bay Area, can have a wide range of extremes in temperatures. In the basins and valleys adjoining the coast, climate is subject to wide variations within short distances as a result of the influence of topography on the circulation of marine air. The San Francisco Bay Area offers many varieties of climate within a few miles. For example, the average maximum temperature in July is about 64 °F (18 °C) at Half Moon Bay on the coast, 87 °F (31 °C) at Walnut Creek only 25 miles inland, and 95 °F (35 °C) at Livermore, just 40 miles inland.

I grew up in El Cerrito, which is right opposite the Golden Gate, so it was foggy a lot.  We have the advantage of "natural air conditioning" from the Pacific Ocean. The warm air in the Central Valley just brings in the cooler air from the ocean. I still remember the first time I woke up after moving to CV and seeing fog in my backyard!! I was so happy. It felt like home. I love fog, in case you aren't paying attention.

The moral of this story: If the rest of USA keeps getting this hot every summer, eventually California housing prices will go back up!

Weather Jokes of the Week:

Q: What’s the difference between weather and climate?
A: You can’t weather a tree, but you can climate.

Q: How do you find out the weather when you’re on vacation?
A: Go outside and look up.

Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Frank ran up a terrible record of forecasting for a TV news program. He became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost 300 times in a single year. That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired. He moved to another part of the country and applied for a similar job. One blank on the job application called for the reason for leaving his previous position. Frank wrote, "The climate didn't agree with me." 

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You can view a weather satellite view of Castro Valley at any time from any place that shows all the backyard weather stations, by using this link: Castro Valley Weather

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