If you hate hot weather and have to live in California, near the beach is the place to be. My brother in Palm Desert is experiencing temperatures over 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius) on an almost daily basis. My friends Bill and Kathy in Altadena are typically getting temperatures over 90° Fahrenheit (32° Celsius). Martine and I, on the other hand, live two miles (3.2 km) from the beach and have been comfortable in temperatures not much warmer than 80° Fahrenheit (27° Celsius).

The reason for this is that we are enjoying what is referred to as the marine layer, which is what you get when relatively warm and dry air moves atop a body of cooler water. Sometimes, this layer only goes inland several hundred feet, or several miles, or even all the way to the edge of the desert.

As I drive to the beach, I enjoy looking at my Subaru’s thermometer reading dropping as I near the water. Today, fore instance, from Centinela Avenue to Chace Park in the Marina, a distance of two or three miles, the temperature dropped six degrees Fahrenheit from 83° to 77°. Plus there was a steady breeze that disappeared only a few hundred feet inland.

We live in an apartment that was built in 1945 (the year I was born) without insulation. We have fans, but no air conditioning. (We couldn’t afford it.) It is generally cheaper to live farther inland, but one cannot survive without air conditioning.

Only later in the summer and into early fall does the marine layer becomes less of a factor when the Santa Ana Winds bring the hot dry desert air to the beach communities and blows the marine layer offshore.