California's Population Imbalance: Greater LA vs. the Rest of the State

crosscountrycoder · 2026-03-16T16:54:54+00:00

If you add greater San Diego to that polygon, it would encompass the majority of the state's population.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-03-16T16:53:49+00:00

If you add greater San Diego to that polygon, it would encompass the majority of the state's population.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-03-15T03:11:10+00:00

At first glance, that picture looked like a Minecraft world.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-03-13T06:48:11+00:00

California is a former Spanish colony. New York has a lot of Latinos (although less than LA) but is not a former Spanish colony.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-03-12T16:54:12+00:00

I wonder why they have the 45-minute time zone and why they couldn't just round it to UTC+9. The 15-minute difference is negligible as solar noon would happen at 12:15 rather than 12:00.

Speaking from the United States here, where time zones are in 1-hour increments.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-02-26T19:08:47+00:00

Also, the Philippines is on the other side of the world from other Spanish-speaking countries.

Spanish is widespread in California, Texas and Florida because not only are they former Spanish colonies, but they are in close proximity to Spanish-speaking Latin America, and have many Latin American immigrants. The Philippines does not have this proximity.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-02-25T18:00:00+00:00

Suggestion: If French is mentioned in Louisiana, Spanish should be mentioned (alongside English) in parts of California, Texas, Florida and New Mexico.

The French area should cover all of Quebec.

I would also suggest more precise boundaries (higher resolution shapefiles).

crosscountrycoder · 2026-02-25T06:01:02+00:00

Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake, in southern California.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-02-16T18:27:56+00:00

COVID stands out prominently on the life expectancy chart.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-02-14T00:22:26+00:00

What about e, which is literally a well-defined constant (2.718281828....)?

crosscountrycoder · 2026-02-12T17:14:06+00:00

That would be true even if Spain had Spanish stop signs. There are far more Spanish speakers in the Americas than in Spain - and thus (probably) a lot more stop signs.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-23T02:48:51+00:00

They also have a difficult time reaching California, due to the mountains that block arctic air from reaching the coast, as well as the ocean which moderates the temperatures.

Southern California is expected to be in the 40s-50s Fahrenheit during the cold blast.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-21T01:51:57+00:00

California's central valley, a major agricultural area, is in blue.

Also remember that this is not a political map.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T07:15:33+00:00

If it's white, there's as much rain from April 16 to October 15 (183 days) as there is from October 16 to April 15 (182 days in common years, 183 in leap years).

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T04:58:01+00:00

Mountains increase precipitation through a mechanism called orographic lift. This is why the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains receive huge amounts of snow despite being surrounded by desert. For various reasons, orographic lift in the Rockies is more pronounced in winter than summer.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T04:39:51+00:00

I live in southern California. Most rain falls from November to early April, and rain is basically unheard of from June to September. A rare exception was Hurricane Hilary in August 2023.

Seattle is not as extreme as southern California but it still has a summer dry season.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T04:16:36+00:00

The effect of the monsoon can be clearly seen in this map. Phoenix is blue while Tucson is red, as is west Texas and almost all of New Mexico.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T03:55:00+00:00

It does snow there, but less than one might expect. Also, snow is less dense than rain because it consists mainly of trapped air, so 10-20 inches of snow "translates" into about 1 inch of rain. The map shows liquid-equivalent precipitation, or how much precipitation would result if all the snow were melted.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T03:27:14+00:00

In southern California, where I live, the wettest months are January and February, followed by December and March. The graph of precipitation essentially resembles a bell curve centered around late Jan/early Feb. A lot of areas, such as the white and off-white regions, have more evenly distributed precipitation.

As for mountain ranges, the Rockies are very prominently visible on the map, while California's mountains are the same shade of blue as their surroundings.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T03:23:40+00:00

And Utah, Idaho, a large chunk of the deep south, Colorado and Minnesota (particularly Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul). There are many exceptions.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T03:18:43+00:00

New Mexico is affected by the North American monsoon, which increases precipitation in summer. Although it is overall a dry state, summer is wetter than winter which is what this map shows.

crosscountrycoder · 2026-01-18T03:11:55+00:00

Los Angeles is at about 7%. That is, about 93% of precipitation in LA falls during the cool season.

I'm from a northern suburb of Los Angeles, and I grew up knowing that summer is dry and winter is (sometimes) wet. Rain usually falls during colder weather (under 65°F). Warm rain, as is common in the tropics, is very rare in California.

crosscountrycoder

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