Question

Why do st.louis and San Francisco have such different climates despite the fact they are at almost the same exact latitude ?

Answer 1

San Francisco, which is described by approximately a seven mile by seven mile square, sits at the northern end of a peninsula, straddling the Coast Range just south of where it is broken by the Golden Gate. The melting of the ice sheets that covered the North American continent during the Pleistocene caused sea level to rise and flood the structural depression which is now San Francisco Bay (Howard, 1962; Alt & Hyndman, 1991). Outflow from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, fed by the drainages from the surrounding Sierra Nevada and Coast Range, maintains the breach as the only major outlet to the Pacific. San Francisco's steep topography is the boundary between the Pacific Ocean on the west, San Francisco Bay to the east and the Golden Gate to the north. The highest terrain is toward the south, where the elevations rise to over 900 feet, with Mount Davidson's peak of 938 feet the tallest, followed closely by Mount Sutro at 920 feet and both North and South Twin at 919 feet. In addition to the primary north- northwest to south-southeast ridgeline, a number of significant hills dominate the San Francisco horizon, as spurs off of the main axis.