Fog Cuts Heat--But It’s Still Not Like April

Southern California’s record-shattering heat wave loosened its grip Saturday, but even relatively cooler weather meant highs in the 90s in inland areas, another all-time high for the date at the Los Angeles Civic Center and a “smog attack” at the beaches.

“It looks like the worst is over,” said meteorologist Rick Dittmann of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “It looks like the high-pressure system over the Great Basin is breaking down.”

Along the Orange County coast the temperatures dropped rapidly Saturday when a fog bank covered the coastline. The National Weather Service reported that Huntington Beach and Newport Beach reported temperatures in the mid- to upper-60s at 4 p.m.

“We turned the fog horn on at 3 p.m.,” a spokesman at the Dana Point Harbor Department said.

John Barth, a lifeguard at Huntington Beach, said fog moved into the beach area about 2 p.m. “It’s kind of cold and foggy right now,” he said Saturday afternoon. “It was a lot hotter yesterday.” Barth said between 30,000 and 40,000 people were at the beaches in Huntington Beach on Saturday.

Above Normal Readings

The weather system moved eastward Saturday, lessening its ability to bedevil Southern Californians with a flood of air that heats by compression on its way to the coast. That Santa Ana condition produced 4 days of temperatures in the 100s in Los Angeles and made El Toro in Orange County the hottest spot in the nation with 112 degrees on Thursday.

Temperatures Saturday were still about 20 degrees above normal for this time of year. At the Los Angeles Civic Center, the high of 91 was 2 degrees warmer than the previous record high of 89 set in 1899 and tied in 1987.

Dittmann predicted that today would be more comfortable, with highs in the 60s and 70s near the coast, in the low to mid-90s in the warmest inland valley and in the mid-80s at the Civic Center.

Highs in Santa Ana were predicted at 87 today, with a high of 73 in San Clemente. Overnight lows in Orange County were mostly in the 50s.

On Saturday, Orange County’s highs reached 94 in Santa Ana, 89 at El Toro and 85 in San Juan Capistrano.

The forecast through Monday calls for sunny days and fair nights, with a few morning coastal low clouds.

At White Memorial Medical Center on Los Angeles’ Eastside, a Boyle Heights woman, who was hospitalized with an elevated temperature and fast pulse Friday evening, died of apparent cardiac arrest, a hospital spokeswoman said Saturday.

Nursing Supervisor Mary Latner said that while the heat “certainly didn’t help” Barbara Zavaleta, 50, it was not possible to determine whether it contributed to her death. An autopsy is pending, Latner said.

While Saturday’s skies were generally sunny and blue, smog stained metropolitan Los Angeles, the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys, the Riverside-San Bernardino areas and--in a reversal of the usual pattern--the beaches.

“We’re having a smog attack,” said Los Angeles County Lifeguard Capt. Don Rohrer, who commands a beach area running from Marina del Rey to Topanga. “All that smog that’s blown off the city is hovering over the beach here. It’s a condition that we don’t face often. Visibility is down to about a mile and a half.”

Despite the smog, however, Rohrer said more than 100,000 beach-goers had thronged into his area to enjoy 80-degree temperatures and water temperatures in the low 60s.

To the north, Lt. Roger Smith estimated that 100,000 more people had crowded beaches from Topanga to the Ventura County line. To the south, Capt. Steve Voorhees expected 200,000 to jam the oceanfront from Playa del Rey to Cabrillo Beach.

Patients were cooler at the UCLA Medical Center, where a fire Thursday night knocked out air conditioning for the hospital. Spokesman Rick Elbaum said the patient areas were “almost back to normal” on Saturday.