On Apr 7, 2011, at 10:44 AM, totototo@telus.net wrote: > Mary Sue, iirc, lives even further north up the coast, and I speculate that her > winter rainfall is even worse than Western Hills'. The web indicates that > Eureka has about twice the rainfall of Victoria, ~38 vs. ~18 inches per year. > Temperature graphs indicate at Victoria's climate is slightly warmer in summer > and colder in winter than Eureka. > > Maybe this isn't right, but whatever the explanation, clearly there's an > ecological surprise here. > I remember seeing this back when I was exploring the mediterranean climates of the world. I saw a distinct rain shadow effect for Victoria, BC and Port Angeles, Wash. that faded as you went north, east, south, or west of that region. Your annual rainfall there in Victoria is almost exactly the same as our annual rainfall here in Pasadena, Calif. 1600 km south of you. On the other hand there is still some USDA Zone 10 climate hugging the far northern Calif. coast including Eureka and extending up to the coastal southwestern corner of Oregon just past Brookings. I drove through Brookings once, just to see, and sure enough the landscape plants looked very similar those around parts of the San Francisco Bay Area region. At some point driving north out of Brookings, the flora rapidly changed to a "non-California" appearance. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a