Tropical Air to Return, May Precede Rain

A flow of warm, moist tropical air that kept Orange County temperatures mostly in the 80-to-90-degree range under high cloudiness Monday can be expected to continue today--with a chance of more showers by Wednesday--according to WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times.

WeatherData meteorologist Mike Smith said the low pressure area that has been off the coast “is finally moving slowly inland, increasing the chances of showers again, but those chances really won’t amount to much until Wednesday.”

High temperature at Santa Ana Monday was 92 degrees; the mercury reached 86 degrees in El Toro and 78 degrees in Newport Beach.

The high reported at Los Angeles Civic Center on Monday was 92 degrees, with relative humidity ranging from 27% to 70%. San Gabriel and Death Valley were hotter, with 94 degrees reported in both places; Ontario, Palm Springs and San Bernardino all had 93 degrees; it was 92 in Monrovia and Montebello; 91 in Long Beach and 90 in Blythe and Burbank.

WeatherData predicted that today should be about the same. But the National Weather Service did not entirely agree.

Federal forecasters agreed that the storm system could be expected to move inland across Central California, with the chance of showers and thundershowers rising to 60% by Wednesday, but they predicted a high temperature of only 81 degrees for Santa Ana and 82 degrees at the Los Angeles Civic Center today.

Radar spotted a few showers off the coast between Oxnard and Lompoc on Monday afternoon, but forecasters said there was only about a 20% chance that they would come ashore today.