I'll always tell you that the weather is perfect in the South Bay (Southern California), and everywhere in the world in the spring and fall. Don't believe me--those are wishful memories, carefully weeded.
Also don't believe me when I emphatically tell you that there is no such thing as a "natural" disaster. While this may once have been 99.9% true and is now perhaps 95% true, the statement is not as useful or truthy as it once was. The curve of our increasing knowledge and technology and ability to avoid living and building susceptible structures in hazard areas has been eclipsed by our increased exposure to rare natural processes that once were avoidable, but now are harder to predict and avoid by spreading human populations. Those rare truly "natural" disasters--meteor strikes, volcanic eruptions in new areas not previously considered unsafe--are now joined by creeping increasing hazards like glacial outburst floods that were not as common in the Holocene. There is also a human-caused category that is creeping and caused not by those living in harm's way but by others: more severe fires in fire-suppressed forests and bigger floods due to our fossil-fuel-warmed atmosphere. As the climate shifts deeper into the Anthropocene, we need to recalibrate, take into account new risks, and the changing landscape under our feet. Maybe we have always been catching up--"there are no natural disasters," while using an absolute to make an important point that people can make better decisions, always had a ring of perfect hindsight. You can see what you should have done differently after the first disaster. Perhaps the better saying is "there are no repeat natural disasters." If you decide to continue living in the floodplain after the first flood, or after the first flood map prediction, all the repeat disasters are human-caused from the choice to stay in harm's way--they are not natural.
Right now I'm reading Tim Palmer's important book "Seek Higher Ground." Anyone living in a floodplain (that by definition was created by repeated flooding that will continue and get worse in the future) must read this book.
