I want to visit Southern California next year, but before the summer. What is spring like over there, and is it a good time to visit? Alison Sloan, Manchester

Sunday Times travel expert Richard Green: Los Angeles has about 300 clear days a year, so for a start you are onto a winner.

It does get down to about 9 degrees at night during the winter, which coincides with most of the rainfall, but then starts to warm up around March time. In fact, from March to May is a great time to visit ­ daytime highs can reach the low 20's Celsius, and there isn't the problem with smog that there is in high summer.

Spring in southern California has that thrilling expectant feel that it does in anywhere that there are noticeable season. Here the air is clear and fresh and the sunshine becomes pleasantly stronger and more warming.

The spring is also the time for the wildflowers to emerge, even in California, and even in areas that look like desert for the rest of the year. The peak is in April, all the areas, from the coast, mountains, and desert are in bloom.

If you have a car and are in the area, don't miss the amazing carpets of orange poppies at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. It's at the western tip of the Mojave Desert, about 70 miles north east of Los Angeles.

Ideally you want to be gone from the southern Californian coast by the late spring, in late May, when a phenomenon occurs called the Marine Layer. It is caused by the desert air to the east, heating up, rising, and sucking in cooler air off the Alaskan Current. This then mixes and condenses overnight causing ominous clouds in the mornings that can sometimes form mist or much more rarely, drizzle. The cloud layer usually burns off in the afternoons, but can stay hazy all day in summer.

It's called June Gloom, but for anyone used to UK weather; it's positively

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