The Newtown bee., 1895-02-08

DISAPPEARING ssNoRTHER''-DANGER
 GUS CHANGES IN TEMPERATURE-AN
 IMPARTIAL REPORT.
 Having summered and wintered with southern California for two successive years, permit me to give the Ameriean's
 readers some idea of it's peculiarities as they appear to Yankee eyes. As it's climate is prime attraction with in- yalids, consider this first. It may be said to have two climates, one by day
 the other at night. The day semi-tropic, the night is quite temperate. Of course this difference in the temperature
 of day and night is less in winter
 amounting some times to as little as l5 degrees, but the average for the year must be about 40 degrees. November i, 1894, the range of the thermometer was
 55 degrees, from 97 degrees by day to 42 at night. With such extremes of temperature as the rule, it is as incon- sistent to talk of mean temperature as it would be to estimate the mean tenn perature of thes Mexican sea coast and Mexico's central elevated plateau. If any fair mean temperature is to be con- sidered, it should be either of the days alone or of the nights, not of days and nights together.
 The thermometer touched 113 degrees August, 1885, but such heat carries with it no danger of sunstroke. It strikes one in the face, as you walk in the sum- shine, like the breath of an open over door while baking is in progress, invit- ing to repose, of course; not suspending
 business nor causing as much sweat and grime as 10 or even 20 degrees less would do on the humid Atlantic coast. The dry air, with no rain falling for weeks and even months at time, is relieved by strong ocean breeze that springs up and the day grows heated and dies away with declining day. Yet nearly all with the means and leisure escape from the fervid rays to shore or mountain. Sue ceeding the semi-tropic day falls Dight so temperately cool, hardly without ex- ception, that sleep is refreshing and blankets are comfortable even in the midst of the summer solstice. Thunder storms are of rare occurrence, though l have known of one horse struck by lightning; the thunder seems less heavy and the lightning not so frequent as we were brought up on.
 With the gradual departure of summer, for winter here is hardly more than a mild fall, northers are liable to spring up, blowing furiously, but rarely doing other damage than to bring down an insecure sign or cover the ground with
 golden oranges. These northers are irregular in repetition and continuance, seldom blowing more than once or twice month, or lasting longer than two or three days at 8 time. They fill the air with electricity and dust, and their abil- ity to dry up everything in their path was recently forcibly illustrated. The earth was soaked by rain and the streets deep with mud, but mortimer had only been blowing for 24 hours when it had Kicked up enough dust to make the air dense with it. Housewives naturally dislike these boreal outbursts, for the dust is driven into every room in the house, and one's name way be written anywhere on the sands of time. You will not read much about these northers in the flowing descriptions this section is so fond of sending forth in pamphlet, circular and newspaper.
 Neither do they give space to the ter rbie freezes that occasionally descend upon the ivalleys in this sunny cline. The worst of these, in the winter of 1891 92, cost Riverside alone $750, ,000 easily, and, followed by poor prices and milder freeze, has changed this city of orange groves from the richest city in capital in the country ,as the Bradstreet's once quoted it, to an almost bankrupt condition. There are white frosts every winter all over California, but these do very little damage. The ground hardly l ever freezing, the rising sun speedily ldriyes Jack Frost from the valleys. Friday morning, December 2l, there was l a severe white frost, covering roof and glass with it's hoary rime; but that morning picked beautiful rosebuds on lmy premises and noticed an enterprising orange tree not far away putting out | it's sweet bloom.
 The cause of these frosts and of the 1 conditions of climate are not far to seek. Lift your eyes from the orange groves
 that surround you in their perpetual Igreen and to the northeast you see Mus lSan Benardino and Greyback; to the east Mt San Jacinto, while peeping Ithrough notch of the CucumonRa mountains to the northwest you catch 8 1 glimpse of old Baldy's snowy crest. These peaks tower over 10, 900 feet tsbove the ssa, while lower ranges and