Not a bad little bedroom community
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11/2/2013
I'm a native Californian and have lived here most of my life - save for about a year total in Eugene, Oregon, two separate times. I've lived in Southern, Central, and Northern California for extended periods of time (at least 8 years in each) and Northern California for by far the longest (over 20 years now).
Of all the places I've lived I've enjoyed the North Bay Area - basically all of coastal California north of San Francisco from Marin County on up - the most. If you want total warmth or near-warmth 365 days a year (more or less) without it being overbearingly hot coastal Southern California (L.A., San Diego, etc.) is for you but the North Bay Area, including the "Friendly City" of Rohnert Park, has some of the mildest and most temperate winters and summers you'll find just about anywhere in the State. Go 30-50+ miles to the east of here and you'll find the summers much hotter. 70+ miles inland you're easily looking at 100+ degrees for at least 4-6 weeks in the summer. It's bad.
You WILL get approximately 1-2 weeks of fairly scorching weather during the day in the summer but the nice thing about the North Bay is it almost always cools off very nicely in the evening. It can be 90+ degrees during the day but will drop below 70 in the evening, making the overall weather quite tolerable and evenings plenty cool enough to sleep with your windows open - and can often be downright chilly even after hot summer days.
This year we did have a week of pretty miserable high pressure that kept up the temperatures even in the evenings but that is quite unusual.
Rohnert Park is only 30-35 minutes from the coast and it's easy to get to. This also means you frequently get a fairly dense marine layer that sweeps in from the coast during the mornings, often lasting into the late morning and sometimes early afternoon, keeping things even on warm days very cool. The closest beach by far is Dillon's, which is actually a private beach (you have to pay to park there). There are many very nice vacation rentals at Dillon's if you're ever interested.
Northern California gets more rain in general than Southern California (duh, obviously) but it's definitely less than say Oregon or Washington. It also varies sharply from year to year. 3-4 years ago for example it rained daily for almost 3 months solid after what had been a very dry winter up to that point. Subsequent years have been much drier though certainly wetter than So Cal. In short, from year to year it's a toss-up how much rain you might experience.
Depending on the rain and how brutal the summer is the hills around Rohnert Park and the surrounding Sonoma, Napa, and Marin Counties will definitely turn brown in the summer. If it's a really heavy rain year it might be delayed for quite some time but usually you'll have at least a few months of brown. By December or January things will usually return to a pretty green on the hills and forests around here. You are quite close to very pretty and large Redwood forests in Rohnert Park - less than 20 minutes.
Sorry this wasn't very short but I'm verbose by nature. To sum up the North Bay Area weather in general it is some of the most temperate in the State, cooling off nicely most evenings and in the depths of winter or height of summer usually very mild.
boethius | Rohnert Park, CA