San Jose, California Francisco Bay. Santa Clara Valley is the population center of the Bay Area and, like the hub and spokes of a wheel, surrounding communities emanate outwards from the valley. This growth, in part, has shaped the greater Bay Area as it is today in terms of geographic population distribution and the trend of suburbanization away from the valley. There are four distinct valleys in the city of San Jose: Almaden Valley, situated on the southwest fringe of the city; Evergreen Valley to the southeast, which is hilly all throughout its interior; Santa Clara Valley, which includes the flat, main urban
San Jose, California expanse of the South Bay; and the rural Coyote Valley, to the city's extreme southern fringe. San Jose, like most of the Bay Area, has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csb"). San Jose has an average of 301 days of sunshine and an annual mean temperature of . It lies inland, surrounded on three sides by mountains, and does not front the Pacific Ocean like San Francisco. As a result, the city is somewhat more sheltered from rain, giving it a semiarid feel with a mean annual rainfall of , compared to some other parts of the Bay Area, which can