Rethinking June Gloom: California’s True Winter Season

How reframing our thoughts around gloomy weather can help us find new appreciation for it.

Posing in the June Gloom under a row of jacaranda trees just beginning to bloom. Photo credit: Derrick C. Brown

Recently, on a trip to Los Angeles to visit my parents and give my dad some extra love for Father’s Day, I was reminded of how dreary the month of June can be for many not native to the city and also for some who are. Friends and family in L.A. told me how sick they were of living for weeks upon weeks in the foggy, chilly weather which had been permeating the entire county, from the beaches of Santa Monica to the mountain ranges of Pasadena. My brother-in-law even quipped to me on his recent trip to L.A., "We're so sick of this weather! We're getting the hell out of here." He lives in San Francisco, a city known for its famous fog. Mark Twain once said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” If you’ve spent time in the city during those months, you’ll know Twain was right.

Still, the fog comes and goes in the Bay Area, but L.A.’s cold, cloudy, damp, overcast sky in the months of May and June is consistent, never changing or breaking, and it cannot help but make you feel depressed sometimes, even in the sunshine state. Growing up in Los Angeles, we had a term for this particular time of year: June Gloom. The seemingly endless gray sky stretches from the end of spring into the beginning of summer and is considered by many to be a bleak time in a city that prides itself on its almost year-round summer climate, but I think there’s a lot to be learned from the Eeyore of weather patterns. 

In Katherine May’s brilliant book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, she writes about how to see winter as not just a season but a state of being. May believes that these cold, winter months are the perfect time to turn inward and reflect on how best to cool off our anxiety-riddled brains, to become as quiet as snowfall, and to look a little harder and closer at what we can gain by honoring the darkness outside as well as the darkness within ourselves.

California’s real winter season (December through February) has always been marred by high-stakes drama: massive rainstorms, El Niño, mudslides, and long bouts of uncertain drought, whereas June and its infamous gloom have always carried the kind of consistency that an East Coast winter promises. You can count on the dark, cold skies to stay that way, to tell a story of why they’re here and staying here, temperature shifts be damned.

I like to think of June Gloom in Los Angeles in the same way I think about winters in New York: they both stir such powerful feelings in those who experience them, both have good and bad side effects, and both can inspire great periods for existential regrouping. The one major difference is winter’s short hours of daylight which can cause seasonal affective disorder (SAD) compared to the gray clouds that cover the sky during the long, light days of June. But a Los Angeles June can illuminate so much about our lives and the speed at which we’re going in the same way a New York winter can, if only we let it.

June in Los Angeles can be a newfound doorway between the end of spring’s wildness and the beginning of summer’s incessant heat—between too much dark followed by too much bright. It is a time when L.A. pulls out all its stops to show you the full breadth of its natural beauty with its infamous jacaranda trees—a gorgeous, tall tree covered in lilac-colored flowers—in full bloom, taking over the streets. June and her gloom can act as a  midyear reminder, encouraging us to reflect on what the previous six months have given us—or taken from us—and preparing us for what may come from the next six.

We tell ourselves that we already know exactly how our year will play out, that each season is already defined by exactly what we know we’re supposed to be doing during it. All year we work. We hustle. We stress. We do and do and do until November and December roll around, when we finally celebrate together in the darkest, coldest of days, allowing ourselves the sadness and depression that can come along with it; the introspection, the New Year’s resolutions, our hopes and dreams for the coming year heavy on our minds. In January, we dry out from all the fun, then we start it all over again. 

But what if there’s more to discover from the midway point in all of it? From the weather and its many patterns? For Angelenos, perhaps June and her gloom can offer a new tradition: an intermission. A chance to get up , stretch your legs, and reflect and refuel between what has come before and all that’s on the horizon. 

What’s your version of a June Gloom month? Tell me about a period of time during the year that’s maybe not a recognized season but that always seems to leave you feeling a certain way.