30 THE TOURIST'S CALIFORNIA The mean annual rainfall for the State is 22 inches. 1911 was a wet year. Nearly 80 inches of rain fell in Alpine County, 35 inches in Mendocino County, 26 inches in San Francisco County, 18 inches in the Counties of Monterey and Los Angeles, 11 inches in Fresno and San Diego Counties, and not a fraction of an inch in Imperial County. The floods of 1914 were as abnormal as they were destructive. The normal rainfall of San Francisco is about 25 inches, of Los Angeles, 20 inches, of San Diego, 10 inches. St. Paul, Minnesota, has an average of 30 inches, New York, 20, St. Augustine, Florida, 55. Santa Clara County is said to have the highest percentage of clear nights and days, year in and year out, of any California County. For this reason Lick Observatory was built upon one of its hills. In substantiation of a similar claim, denizens of the San Gabriel Valley cite the estab- lishment of the Carnegie Institution's Solar Ob- servatory on Mt. Wilson, 5000 feet above Pasa- dena. In San Diego the sun shines for at least part of the day 355 days in the year. Only once in its weather records has the temperature gone below 32 ; very rarely does it linger in summer above 90. In that most equable of all winter climates " summer melts into winter, day into night." The January average is 57, that of July, 65.
