By Skip Rigney

Different people like different flavors of ice cream. That’s fine. Who can rationally argue that vanilla is better than chocolate, or that strawberry is metaphysically superior to rocky road?
In the same way, people’s predilections for different types of weather are also a matter of personal preference rather than the result of ironclad deductive reasoning or universal inclination.
Still, it’s hard to fathom how anyone could dislike the weather over the last few days. What’s not to like about sunny skies, low humidity, cool evenings and mild days with temperatures ranging from lows in the 50s to highs in the 70s?
I’m sure there are some who find the evenings and early mornings a little too chilly for their liking. They’re probably already wistfully remembering those wonderful mornings of summer. You know the ones when you open the door to your car, and it’s still hot from the day before?
And, I know that there are those who view the blue skies with watery eyes between sneezes, who would curse the ragweed pollen if their throats weren’t so sore that it hurts to talk.
But, please, allergy sufferers, don’t blame the weather. The fact that ragweed plants release their dastardly carriers of misery into the air during this wonderful time of year, doesn’t mean it’s the fault of the weather. It’s more an example of correlation than causation.
If, on the other hand, you, like me, revel in the weather of the last few days, you might wonder if there is a paradise on earth where this type of weather is the norm?
There’s no perfection on this earth, but San Diego, California, comes pretty close if you’re looking for long stretches of weather like what we’ve had since Wednesday.
In Pearl River County, we have an average of approximately 80 days per year when the daily average temperature (the average of the day’s high and low) is in the range 65 to 75 degrees. Most of those 80 days are split between October and April.
San Diego typically has 160 days per year with an average temperature of 65 to 75 degrees, nearly double the number in Pearl River County. San Diego residents also enjoy double the number of sunny days that we do, and less than half as many rainy days.
Before you call the moving van and head west to cash in on all that nice weather, you should also consider that you will need to have plenty of cash in the bank.
According to the National Association of Realtors, the median price of a home in San Diego County is $626,184, almost five times higher than the median price of $135,016 in Pearl River County.
Also, you might want to upgrade to a car with a sunroof, because each year you’ll be enjoying about 70 hours of that pleasant sunshine while sitting in traffic jams. Those numbers for San Diego are from traffic congestion research conducted last year by the transportation company INRIX.
Instead we could stay right here in south Mississippi where the weather through Tuesday will be very much like San Diego’s.
And, we’ll probably have several more of these stretches before the end of October.