There are two things of interest about Fresno:
1) Close to Yosemite
2) Its airport code is FAT
So, after spending a year in SoCal establishing my in-state residency, I determine the cheapest school in the state that has my major. I sign up, pack up my few belongings in San Diego and head north. I roll into town and drive down the main drag of town at 11:30pm one August day. Shaw Avenue is the "Wall Street" of Fresno with a bank or Ag Co-Op Credit Union every block. The first sign I see reads 107°F. I laugh at its utter brokenness. The next sign says 108°F. At 11:30pm. I crank down the window and hang my hand out. It feels like a hair dryer set on high is blowing on it. I roll the window right back up and have this sneaky suspicion that I've made a terrible mistake.
The next morning, I walk down to the hotel lobby of the El Cheapo Motel I had booked and pick up a copy of the local rag, the Fresno Bee so I could find an equally cheap apartment. Emblazoned above the fold is the 150pt headline saying Fresno had set a new heat record. I was hugely relieved to know that the hideous weather from the day before had been an anomaly. 1 paragraph in, I was horrified to find that the temp was not an all-time high (that's a ridiculous 115°F) but the record was that it was the 34th day in a row with high temps over 100°F, breaking the streak of 33 days in a row a couple of years earlier.
In desert climates, super high heat is usually tempered by the fact that humidities are relatively low so it feels like a "dry heat". Fresno sits in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley which is, per acre, the most productive farm land in the world. While that is mildly interesting, what is noteworthy is that there is no rain whatsoever during the growing season. Instead, the entire valley is watered at 5pm each day by lawn sprinklers and massive industrial watering systems being fed by snowmelt from the High Sierra. This jumps the humidity from a desert-like 15% to 90% each day and is the reason why the high temps persist deep into the night.
Fresno Air Terminal (FAT) really does not get as many chuckles as you would think. I always thought that was interesting. I did experience two of the most exhilarating rides of my life there, though. One was a ride in a T-38 Talon and the other was in a C-5 Galaxy compliments of my AFROTC detachment. Takeoffs and landing from a small strip like that at FAT could not be more dissimilar than in those two planes.
Fresno is indeed close to some great things which is why I spent most of my free time in the Sierra to the east and the central coast to the west. It's kind of sad that the best thing about a place is the things that are somewhat near the place...
And, to keep this marginally baseball-related, I never, ever once had a rain delay at Beiden Field watching the Bulldogs or Fresno Giants play. Not so much as even a drop.
