Weird weather continues for California....

As we break records for the hottest May.... Found a site (no permalinks so the post is Monday, May 07, 2007) that describes what we're going through:

It seems it has been just a strange, strange winter season in California.

Tops on that of course is the lack of rain. Downtown Los Angeles is still very much on track to having the driest rainfall season on record. Much of California has been much drier than normal as well.

Back in January there was the BIG FREEZE, and accompanying that was snow in very unusual places. It snowed in the hills around Malibu with several inches of accumulation. There was also several inches of snow at less than 1,000 feet above sea level in the Inland Empire across southwest San Bernardino County. A devastating freeze hit the agricultural community all across central and southern California, but especially the citrus industry in the San Joaquin Valley. Fresno had 19 straight nights of freezing, or below freezing temperatures. Some of the coldest parts of the Valley dipped into the middle and upper teens on three consecutive nights. This freeze devastated the citrus that was heavily laden on all the trees.

Just a couple weeks later it was record heat the returned to southern California with highs well into the 80s, and even some lower 90s, for a couple of days the first week of February.

Now we have Santa Ana winds in May. Santa Ana winds developed through and below passes and canyons of southern California Saturday night and Sunday morning and continued today. I have lived in this area for the past 10 years and cannot remember a Santa Ana wind event this late in the season. It certainly has to be quite rare. This has helped temperatures spike well into the 90s today with very low humidity and Red Flag Warnings out.

Yup. High 90s. In May. My yard will look like this: