Brontë weather.

Misty San Lorenzo Valley, taken from my side yard during a lull in the storm.

After an extended Indian Summer - that even made a reappearance halfway through January, it seriously just didn’t want to go - we’re finally experiencing some winter in Santa Cruz. It’s been raining and storming on and off for weeks now, making everything soupy and misty, sometimes snowy and hail-y, windy and sleet-y, but generally damp and chilly, for a couple of months now. The snow in the mountains rarely sticks (though it did hang out on top of Loma Prieta for a couple of days at the beginning of the month), but the wind gusts and driving rain on their own can be pretty impressive.

Some people hate it, it gives others the S.A.D.s, but I find it thrilling in a beautiful, kind of crazy way. I call it Brontë Weather: beautiful but dangerous, sublime (as characterized by both Burke and Kant), and generally louder and more awesome than you. I think it’s the perfect weather for enjoying the local geography. Picture it: redwoods swaying in the fog, churning seas, craggy, foam-topped shorelines. Brontë weather makes the best beach outings (the beaches are awesomely scary! and devoid of sunbathers! just you and a bunch of other people with dogs!), and, when you’re home, baking and soup making, and candle-lit (you never know when the power’s going to go out and stay out) fire building. Though it sometimes feels spooky and sinister, it’s arrival is my favorite time of year here in the Monterey Bay. Who am I kidding, I love spooky and sinister. When I think of California Gothic, I think of the Monterey Bay under these kinds of weather conditions. I wonder if Steinbeck did so as well. Denis Johnson certainly did (well, not true, his Already Dead was set in Mendocino. whatever, close enough, I digress). 

I originally called it Wuthering Heights Weather, but I’m trying to make an effort to be a bit more inclusive, especially now that Jane Eyre is getting the Hollywood treatment. Wuthering Heights is still my favorite Brontë novel (and Emily my favorite Brontë) but I’m warming up more and more to Charlotte and certain aspects of her Jane Eyre and I’m curious as to how this new film will interpret the original text (I also love director Cary Fukunaga’s other film Sin nombre [2009], so I admit to having high hopes). More on all that to come. 

Anyways. I’m off to nurse this cold with some tea and netflix.