Acorn Fever strikes Southern California

It is 2:30 in the afternoon in San Diego, California, and I just pulled on a sweatshirt. I've felt it coming on for several days and now, just like that, it has hit. Acorn Fever.

Acorn Fever strikes thousands of Southern California residents every September. Some suggestion of fall weather breaks out and infects us with strong urges to pull on sweaters, build fires, rake leaves, and drink apple cider. The problem is, there are no leaves to rake. This afternoon and tomorrow, I can expect to go out for a drive and see numerous Pendleton-clad Acorn Fever victims with leaf brooms, purposefully raking green, leaf-free lawns. I can drive to the freeway and notice thick eastbound traffic, headed for our local mountains 30 miles away to buy jugs of cider. From chimneys I can expect the scent of wood smoke. Threats to life are in the air.

We are fortunate this season that the Fever appears to have struck on a Friday. Most people don't have to go to work tomorrow. In years when the attacks come on a Monday or Tuesday, the next day you will witness our downtown streets populated with workers in plaids and woolens and pashminas. Weather that started cool and gray at sunrise will have evolved by noon into a blue glare of sky and beach temperatures. By 2 p.m. the downtown temperature may be in the 80s. September is typically our hottest month in Southern California, which is why Acorn Fever is so insidious. By 3 p.m., police and other emergency agencies will be cruising the streets, watching for dark clumps of woolens where a citizen has collapsed and is dissolving into a puddle of sweat on the sidewalk.

Acorn Fever hardly ever strikes twice the same way, but the result is always the same. There is the viral suggestion of fall, enough to make people find sweaters and pull out stewpots, but the suggestion is short-lived, quickly followed by typical September temperatures in the 90s or over 100, which catch the afflicted in their tracks, or in their cars with the heaters on.

Sometimes Acorn Fever arrives with a snap, or what we call a snap in this part of the world. Snaps usually arrive at the end of a particularly hot July and August. A couple of years ago, we hit 118 one afternoon in July. People forget that Southern California essentially is a desert, all the way to the ocean. If we didn't import water over long interstate distances, very few people would live here at all. So after a summer like that, one morning in September the temperature will actually briefly slip below 60. That is what we call a snap.

But this summer has been atypically cool, very few afternoons even into the 90s, even inland, away from the ocean. Among Acorn Fever observers, interest was heightened as September arrived. How might it hit this year, if at all? A September without Acorn Fever would make history. Last Monday, I noticed – or more than noticed – I felt – the morning light arrive later, and the evening dusk arrive sooner. A circadian gear shifted in my head. Then on Wednesday, driving home in the early evening, objects beyond the windshield lost their edges, reminding me of the scene in "Dark Victory" when Bette Davis wonders where the clouds came from so suddenly. I'm at an age where I have lost both hips and my prostate, so it wasn't difficult for me to imagine instant glaucoma. I rubbed my eyes.

But then I looked at the windshield and saw the film of fog spreading upward from the dashboard. I couldn't feel it, but the glass was sensitive enough to feel some differential in the air. It was the Fever out there, incubating. Then today the morning clouds didn't burn off. It even drizzled. At 2:30, the clouds are still there and the house feels cool. Too cool. It is so cozy in this sweater. I should probably build a fire, but I think I'll settle for a couple of chili dogs and see if the thing blows over.