SF Bay Area sees unusually cold July as temps drop below seasonal normals

ORINDA, Calif. (KGO) -- Venturing out for a morning coffee or a playdate Tuesday morning meant bundling up - jacket, hat, scarf? All perfectly reasonable in July, right? Windshield wipers on to get rid of the heavy mist in the air in the East Bay. Normal? No way.

Orinda resident Jeff Allen was out with his grandson. "We just felt a drop or two as we were walking along and we thought boy, it's supposed to be summer. It's not supposed to be raining is it?" Allen said.

ABC7 News meteorologist Lisa Argen also says it's unusual. "We're going into the end of the month and we have had maybe four days that San Francisco hit 70 degrees. Another fun fact - I saw that Oakland had three 75 degree days in February and just one in July," Argen said.

What's missing is the usual build up of high pressure in the atmosphere.

"So we have been bombarded by trough after trough from the Pacific Northwest, more like a fall pattern," she said.

It's altering summer plans.

Kids plunged into their parkas after their swim team practices - they had to dive in.

"When I got in the water, I felt like I wanted to get out right away and get on the parka," a 9-year-old swimmer said.

The cooler, damper weather is just fine for grapevines and other plants.

"For ornamental plants, flowering plants, they stay a little fresher longer than in the heat - they'll hold onto blooms longer," Taro McCuen with Sloat Garden Center said.

But for vegetable gardens, the lack of sun is slowing down the growing season.

"They sort of pause right there on the vine. Like you could see them ripening with the warmer weather that we had a month ago or so, and you could see them go from green to orange to red. But they seem to just pause," McCuen said.

The weather is also hitting pause on the fire season

"It's working in our favor decreasing fire danger around here. There are signs August will be bringing out more normal weather patterns," Argen said.