Weatherman Putting His Best Face Forward

Sunday’s and Monday’s weather was the kind that causes weekend visitors to stay in Southern California for 30 years--and the National Weather Service said it should stay that way for most of the week.

Another Pacific storm might be bearing down on Northern and Central California, Sierra winds might be gusting to 30 m.p.h. and Lake Tahoe residents might still be digging out from under an earlier storm that weather service spokesman Al Cox called “the biggest since 1982.”

But the Southland lay dreaming beneath the kind of midwinter sun that makes picture postcards a major industry hereabouts.

High pressure over the Southwestern states should last for the next few days, the meteorologists explained, which ought to keep our skies mostly clear, temperatures high and workday absenteeism astronomical.

Those calling in sick today, for instance, were told to expect surf running three feet on most beaches, with temperatures to the low 70s and just the occasional hint of a 10-knot sea breeze.

Orange County’s forecast calls for highs between 65 and 75 Wednesday with few clouds.

The thermometer topped off at 80 degrees Monday in two Orange County spots--Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano--while highs were recorded at 75 in El Toro and 69 in Newport Beach.

High temperature at Los Angeles Civic Center Monday was 80 degrees, with relative humidity dropping from 37% overnight to 9% by mid-afternoon, and the weather service said we might as well get used to the warmth because it is not going to get much cooler before Thursday, when a few more clouds may find their way in from the north.

They would be the remnant of storms that left more than three feet of snow in some parts of the Sierra, closing Interstate 80 and U.S. 50 and briefly posing the threat of an avalanche in Squaw Valley.

But the avalanche failed to materialize, the highways were reopened and, by Monday, Lake Tahoe-area ski resort operators rejoiced at the sight of their deeply buried slopes.

“This,” said Marshall Lewis, marketing director at Alpine Meadows, “is definitely what the doctor ordered . . . .”