In Southern California, June gloom is the familiar marine layer that rolls in with overcast skies. Jeremy from Long Beach wonders if other places have similarly named weather patterns. Indeed, Southern California also has May gray, no sky July, and Fogust. An extended rhyming version goes May gray, June gloom, July fry, August die. Other jocular names for months inspired by weather are Juneuary (or Junuary) and Graypril, Snowvember in places like Buffalo, New York, and miracle March in ski towns. And you know someone’s a local if they’re talking about Karl the Fog in San Francisco, California, or saying The mountain is out in Portland, Oregon. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““June Gloom” and Other Regional Nicknames for Seasonal Weather”
Hello.
You have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grant.
Hi, Martha.
This is Jeremy Cooley calling from Long Beach, California.
Long Beach.
Love Long Beach.
How are you doing?
I’m doing great.
How are you all?
Alright.
What’s on your mind?
So I wanted to chat about the weather, specifically the Southern California phenomenon called June gloom.
Story is about a month ago in May, I was talking to a coworker of mine, and he was talking about the weather and saying, oh, yeah.
June Gloom this.
And so I was just thinking about it.
I’ve lived in Southern California my whole life, and I know what June Gloom is.
And I wanted to know if there’s other places in the world that have things like June Gloom and what they’re called and what they are.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
There’s so much can do a whole show on there.
People never stop talking about the weather, Jeremy.
Yeah.
Well, we should probably explain what June Gloom is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So so it’s the marine layer, right?
That’s this, these clouds and fog that are offshore, and because of differentials in air pressure for parts of the day, mostly during the day, it’s offshore.
But at night when the air pressure changes, the temperature drops, it moves inland.
And sometimes it manifests as cloud cover, but sometimes it manifests as fog.
Right.
And I remember moving out here from Kentucky, and wondering what in the heck was going on with the weather.
I thought California was sunny all the time.
Nobody told me.
Well, not only that, if you’re not used to it, when you see what looks like a cliff of fog a mile or two off of the coast, you’re like, What Stephen King novel This am I is bizarre.
And the and the the people usually say, Jeremy, and you know this is May, Gray, June Gloom, which means both of these months are a little overcast.
Yeah.
Right.
And I I googled a little bit, and I actually found two others that I’d never heard before.
Yeah.
That’s here.
That’s here.
No Sky July.
Yeah.
Mhmm.
And then Faugust, which I love.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there’s also and and one book, they were somebody was talking about the weather in La Jolla, which is here in San Diego County.
And they had a longer version.
It went May Gray, June Gloom, July Fry, August Die.
Wow.
Enjoy and August are hot.
Yeah.
And if it starts early, it’s Grape Roll.
Yeah.
You know, the Oh, last love of That’d very good.
Yeah.
You know, alright.
Some more of these.
This is another California thing.
Have you heard of smogust and smoketember and smoketover?
I have never heard of those.
These are when the fires get bad, and, the weather is only part of the problem.
The smoke from the wildfires contributes.
In Buffalo, in the Great Lakes towns, I talk about Snowvember.
Okay.
Yeah, so lots of snow November.
And in ski towns in The United States, and a bunch of them, where they want the snow because it’s good for the skiing business, they talk about Miracle March.
When you get these spring snowfalls, they will bring the customers to, you know, the lifts and the hills, to the runs.
They want that.
But also it gives you that snowpack that you need in the mountains.
You have year round water in your streams.
Right.
You don’t want January.
Yeah.
Well, there’s a January works two ways.
It’s when January feels like June because it’s too hot, or June feels like January because it’s too cold.
I think we could do a whole show on localized weather terms.
I’m thinking about when you go Portland and you say, The mountain is out.
The first time I met that I thought, What?
There’s a mountain out?
Or, you know, the Hawk in Chicago, which is a really strong wind.
Or you were talking about Northern California.
We can’t leave out Carl.
Oh, yeah.
Carl the fog in San Francisco.
Have a lot more of these month blends too, but we’ll just leave those for a minute.
I did want to mention a British botanist named Tim Entwistle who did popularize kind of in a more formal way these in between seasons, sprinter for spring winter blending, and sprummer for spring summer blending.
Because he is saying that in large parts of the world, this is more accurate than saying we have four seasons in the year.
Yeah.
I love that.
That’s incredible.
Thank you so much for all the fun new vocabulary words I’ve learned.
Now I know going to the next time I’m I’m up in Oregon, I can talk about The Mountain is Out.
Yeah.
And you can talk about November and October.
February.
Jeremy, see what you started.
I’m excited.
If if Grant is making puns, I’ve made a successful day.
I’m not I’m just repeating what other people have said.
But he’s appreciating them, Jeremy.
All right.
Jeremy.
Well played.
Thanks so much for your time.
All right.
Thank you so much.
I’ve been a listener for over ten years.
Love your show.
Appreciate it.
Wow.
Awesome.
So happy to be on the show.
Be well.
Call us again Will sometime, do.
All right.
Bye bye.
Grant, I am sure there are people all over the place with more localized weather terms, which I would love to Oh, absolutely.
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