Have you ever actually hiked in California? It's not sunshine and palm trees everywhere, y'know. It's actually below freezing at night most of the places you can backpack, and right now it's freezing in the central valley, which means it's probably subzero up in the high country. Our SAR packs are on standby because it hasn't really dumped the annual snowpack yet and we are guessing that folks are going to get themselves stuck out there any day, pushing their luck with three season stuff. The snowshoes, snow pants, snow probes and shovels are sitting by the door, the extra layers in the pack, and the snow cat is fueled and ready to deploy. Any time now the call will come at 2 am and we'll be running cold water over the windshields to get the ice off 'em to head up the hill, chain up, and grind off toward the command post. (There was ice on my car yesterday. Not much, but more than people think Californians should have.)

Over on the coast, it's not foggy so much as it is frosty and cold. By February they will have snow down to 3,000 feet - at most an inch or two, and quickly melted. But it'll probably freak out tourists.

Florida, now, there's a place winter never really goes...