What's so great about the Black Sea?

Hey, Matt!:

Are all the local beaches equally cloudy on any given day? Or do I have a better chance of actually seeing the sun at PB instead of Del Mar? Could you send the elves up and down the coast and have them report in? At your convenience. Just from the Silver Strand to Cardiff. I am elitist and you have a limited number of elves. My friend was shocked, shocked I say, when there was no sun at the beach. She is from Crimea and lived near the Black Sea. Apparently that is more like the Gulf of Mexico than the Pacific Ocean. I'm getting tired of hearing how good Crimea is compared to San Diego!

-- Mungo, University City

I'm not sure why we have to defend P.B. against attacks from resorts formerly popular with overweight Communist bureaucrats. But we're into it now, so I guess we have to see it through. You'll have to impress Ms. Crimea with something other than our early summer weather, even on our low-budget beaches. The May Gray/June Gloom phenomenon is advection fog. We get it when the warming-up land pulls sea air across the very cold California current. Cold air holds less moisture than warmer air does, so the H2O condenses and gets blown right onto the beach where you're listening to Ms. Crimea dis Encinitas. The only sure-fire way to avoid it is to take your friend to Lake Havasu until August. But please remind her that the gloom is all part of the grand global interplay of wind, water, and sunlight. The Black Sea? A big bathtub. So what if their seaside resorts all look like the Riviera. Hey, P.B. has Hamels castle. So the summer surface temperature of the Black Sea is anywhere from 70 to 78 degrees F. Invest in a wet suit, and you'll never care how cold it gets here. So the Black Sea is a magnet for international vacationers. Introduce Ms. Crimea to a few Zonies. She'll forget all about home.