Highs in Mid-80s : Spring Breezes In Like Summertime

Come, gentle s pring.

Ethereal mildness, come.

--James Thomson (1728)

At 2:03 p.m. today, gentle spring officially arrives in Orange County.

And the first day of spring will, indeed, be sunny and pleasant, according to the weather forecast. The high temperature is expected to be in the mid-80s in most of Orange County. Skies are forecast to be clear and sunny.

The National Weather Service said, however, that “ethereal mildness” won’t exactly describe it.

“It’s unseasonably warm,” said Betty Reo from the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service.

For Reo and her co-workers, however, spring is “just another day; one of many days for us,” she said. “We just take each day as it comes. . . . Of course, it will be nice for the people at the beaches and in the parks. But we’ll be working here.”

Ron Schafer, a lifeguard supervisor at Huntington State Beach, said that the warm sun brought out about 4,000 people Wednesday afternoon, as spring was only hours away.

The warm, pleasant spring follows a a wet, bizarre winter, Orange County officials noted Wednesday.

“We’ve had a very rainy season compared to other years,” said Munir Naime, a civil engineer in the Orange County Environmental Management Agency. The agency records showed that Santa Ana got 1.36 inches of rain in January, 6.06 inches in February, and 2.93 inches so far in March.

“We’re about three to four inches above average rainfall for the season,” Naime said.