How cold was it?

It hit 34 F (1 C) at the beach today.

The rest of the year has been chilly, too.

Most remarkably, the temperatures remained low, even with a mild easterly wind, which usually brings us air warmed by adiabatic compression as it moves downslope.  Notice that we never reached 70 F in January.

Nor in December.

It's nail-biting season for California citrus growers.  We are not out of the woods yet.  The cold will linger for a day or more.

SFGate reports that Redondo Beach officially hit 33 F, not the 34 F at the personal weather station above.

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — California citrus growers began to see some damage to the mandarin crop Monday while winds up to 50 mph add to the misery in cities, where residents have been bundled up against record cold for several days.
Temperatures in downtown Los Angeles plummeted to 34 degrees overnight, breaking the previous record of 36 degrees set on Jan. 14, 2007.

Elsewhere Monday, it was 13 degrees in high desert Lancaster; 25 degrees in Fresno; 27 in Temecula; 29 in Claremont; 33 in Redondo Beach and Sacramento; 34 in Palm Springs; 36 in Van Nuys; and 40 in San Francisco.

Visualizations courtesy of Weather Underground.  Data courtesy of the generosity of the thousands of  owners of personal weather stations that share data with Weather Underground.  Let's hope that survives the merger with the Weather Channel.