"Sunset Sands Ocean Front Vacation Rental in Mission Beach, San Diego - Maps, San Diego weather, and the Green Flash"

The Southern California coastal area, and San Diego in particular, has the most consistent and temperate weather in the U.S. In fact, San Diego is one of the few vacation destinations in the world that has excellent weather year round. It is never too hot or too cold! And very little rain - only 9 inches per year!!

San Diego is one of the few small areas of the world included in in the "Mediteranean" climate zone. It is characterized by warm, sunny and dry conditions, and with little variance in temperature. Beside the countries surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, other places thtat enjoy this climate zone are central Chile and near Perth and Adelaide in Australia.

Visitors from the north can escape the cold and snow, and the desert dwellers of the southwest claim the San Diego coastal zone as their own. The ocean is the moderating influence on the weather. And finally, here's a note of trivia about the environment there that may perk up some ears. There are no (or virtually no) mosquitoes at the beach year-round!

The figures listed below tell the tale. Although the summer brings the warmest weather, it is the peak season for visitors. This is due mainly to the Southwesterners escaping their searing summer heat. But the fall, winter, and spring months have beautiful mild weather as well. You may find the off season the best time to come.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Avg Max Temp	65	66	66	68	69	71	76	78	77	75	70	66	71
Avg Min Temp	48	50	52	55	58	61	65	67	65	60	54	49	57
Average Temp	57	58	59	61	63	66	70	72	71	68	62	57	64
% Sunshine	71	72	70	67	58	57	69	69	68	68	74	72	68
Humidity AM	70	73	74	75	77	81	81	81	79	75	73	71	76
Humidity PM	56	58	59	59	64	66	65	66	65	62	62	58	62
Rainfall in.	2.1	1.4	1.6	.7	.2	.0	.0	.1	.1	.3	1.1	1.3	9.3

The "Green Flash" is a rarely viewed optical phenomena that occurs at sunset at the instant that the upper rim of the sun is in coincidence with the horizon. The Green Flash is caused by a combination of optical effects called light scattering and light dispersion.

Sunlight is composed of all the colors of the visible spectrum. Blue light is the component part of the visible spectrum that is strongly scattered by the earth's atmosphere at sunset. Therefore sunlight tends to laok blue when the sun is near the horizon. Dispersion is the splitting of white light into its component parts. The red end of the visible spectrum shows the least amount of dispersion since it is refracted the least.

At sunset most of the orange and yellow light is absorbed by the earth's atmosphere, while the blue and violet light are scattered. Once the red light portion of the spectrum has already set below the horizon all that is left is the green, which is occasionally seen as a short intense flash. Under ideal conditions one may perceive a brilliant Green Flash at the moment of sunset.

Mission Beach is home to a sunset "ceremony" in which people from all walks of life stop what they are doing and together watch the sun sink beneath the horizon. The awe and wonder of this event is undiminished despite its daily repetition.

However, beside this reverence for the natural order of things, there is also the anticipation that something 'extraordinary" will happen this time. And so the majestic sunset, which moments before dissolved the barriers between generations, genders, and cultures, is replaced by a new social division - those that have seen the green flash, and those that have not. It can be seen by a one-time visitor while eluding a local resident for decades.

SUNSET SANDS