Sonoma County has many many micro climates, not only
with temperature, but also with precipitation. For example Santa Rosa averages
a little over 30 inches of
rain a year, but if you travel 10 to 20 miles away, rainfall averages can be much higher. Cazadero
is in western Sonoma County during one year received 117 inches of rain!
Sometimes for several years in a row Cazadero receives well over 50 inches of rain each year.
Downtown 4th Street park and State Building located behind the post
office
Santa Rosa tends
to have a significant amount of fog in the summer months but each summer can
certainly vary in the amount of actual fog experienced. A number of
folks who live in the San Francisco Bay Area often refer to Santa Rosa
as being very hot in the summers. This is incorrect - days go by in the
summers where fog just sits in the Santa Rosa plain every morning and
may or may not clear out by mid day or afternoon and temperatures during
these times remain quite chilly. During "normal" fog spells, the fog
usually lifts by mid to late morning. During these spells you can drive 20
minutes north and be in sunshine or 30 minutes south and see breaking up
fog in the Novato area - or even sometimes you can drive closer to the
coast in Sonoma County for sunshine as in out to Forestville. Weird?
Yea, Santa Rosa attracts fog like bees to a honey hive.
Summer hot spells in Santa
Rosa rarely last for more then a few days. As a result, compared to
much of the country, Santa Rosa does not experience a "true" summer in
the sense of prolonged hot temperatures. If you go just a bit inland you
will experience a much nicer and warmer summer.
If heat is what you are after, Santa Rosa is certainly not the place to
live.
Humidity? Santa Rosa is located in a
Mediterranean climate - no humidity here. Dry very mild summers, cold
rainy winters.
The temperature reaches 100
or over in Santa Rosa maybe 4-7 days out of the year if you are lucky.
The
upper Napa Valley in Napa County - just east of Sonoma County, or Cloverdale
in northern Sonoma County tend to be much warmer
then Santa Rosa in the summer months. However, Santa Rosa is usually a
bit warmer then these places in the winter. Warmer summers start well
north of Santa Rosa around Cloverdale and Ukiah. The Santa Rosa plain
sits in fairly close proximity to the Pacific Ocean (about 35-40
minutes driving) and as a result is
influenced strongly by the ocean.
Winter highs average in the high 40's and low to mid 50's. Weeks can go
by without temperatures much above 55 degrees F. Summers are very dry
and mild. Temperatures usually remain in the 70's and low 80's.
Typically between the months of November and March
Santa Rosa receives a fair amount of frost and nights where the
temperature hovers at 32 F or several degrees below. Santa Rosa
definitely does not have as mild weather as say more central and
southern California. Because of the generally colder nights in the
winter its difficult to grow semi tropical fruit such as avocadoes or
bananas - although if you look carefully you can actually see a few
small trees around town. Merely a 90 minute to 2 hour drive south will
put you in a region where you can grow avocadoes.
During the shoulder seasons - mid to late Spring and mid to late Fall,
it is not uncommon for a storm to come into Sonoma County and produce
rain - where south of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco it will
be completely or nearly dry, merely 60 to 90 minutes south.
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