It’s getting cold around these parts… in fact, so cold that the National Weather Service issued a “Freeze Warning” today for the entire San Francisco Bay Area, the northern California coast, central valley, and Monterey Bay Area. The temperatures are likely to run from Thursday night to Saturday morning.
Why the extreme temperatures? According to the Weather Service, an arctic airmass is passing over our region. Temperatures could even go down as low as the teens for inland valleys.
Says the Freeze Warning: “This will result in possibly the coldest temperatures the region has seen since December of 1998. Freezing temperatures are possible in areas that rarely see temperatures at or below 32 [degrees fahrenheit], such as coastal and bayside locations as well downtown San Francisco.”
The SF Chronicle reported the freezing temperatures yesterday, noting the impact could destroy central valley citrus crops, potentially wiping them all out, as happened during the 1998 freeze. This means farmers “are firing up huge fans to circulate warm air in the fields and are planning all-night vigils to monitor the nearly $1 billion worth of oranges, tangerines and lemons that must survive the cold.”
I saw the warning appear on the television news just as I got home. CBS-5 took care to report the impact of cold temperatures on the homeless and the importance of safe heating measures to reduce risk of fire and carbon monoxide poisoning. The City will also be providing homeless assistance:
“San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that his city would expand its homeless outreach efforts through the weekend. The Department of Public Health has arranged for two Mobile Assistance Patrol vans to provide help and shuttle people to homeless shelters during the night. Shelters in the Mission, Tenderloin and Bayview neighborhoods will offer drop-in services throughout the day.”
And all this comes the same week as the National Alliance to End Homelessness releases their new major study documenting homelessness and homelessness assistance programs in America. The report notes that state-wide, Santa Clara County and San Francisco have the most homeless, and California has more homeless than any other state (pp 15, 20).
Is all this related to climate change? Real Climate writes earlier this week about the debate of whether the winter warm spell in the east is El Nino or a larger-scale, global warming situation. Here in the freezing Bay Area, a weekend taste of climate crisis may test our systems under stress and provide an opportunity to think about what climate change means locally.
