The Southland Keeps Sizzling in ‘Superheat’

Record-shattering temperatures scorched Orange County for the third straight day Sunday, sending about 300,000 people scurrying to the county’s shoreline and forcing Bolsa Chica State Beach officials to close their parking lot shortly after noon.

“The beach is packed,” said lifeguard Steve Hicks. “At one point, there was a line of cars three miles long waiting to get in here. It’s like the Fourth of July.”

From Orange County to the Inland Empire to downtown Los Angeles, there were plenty of folks wishing for cooler climes on Sunday.

It was hot, hot, hot across the board: The mercury soared to 100 degrees in Santa Ana, where the previous record for the date was 92 degrees--a record set in 1949, according to WeatherData Inc., a private subscription service that provides weather information to The Times. Anaheim recorded a high of 97, San Juan Capistrano 91, and El Toro 92. But along the coast, it was mostly in the low to mid-70s, said WeatherData meteorologist Steve Burback.

The temperature reached 97 degrees in downtown Los Angeles (the old record was 92, set in 1941); 100 in Burbank and a sweltering 104 in Monrovia.

Borrego Springs in San Diego County, with a reading of 106, was the hottest spot in Southern California.

Sunday’s scorching temperatures capped a weekend of highly unusual weather for this time of year, according to meteorologists. On Saturday, the temperature in downtown Los Angeles reached 101 degrees, breaking a 37-year-old record. Saturday’s overnight low was 69, nine degrees higher than the record set in 1957.

“It is the earliest anyone can remember that we’ve had this type of heat,” said Jerry Steiger, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. “It was just plain hot.”

One forecaster called it “superheat.”

Hundreds of thousands sought relief from the heat at area beaches, clogging freeways and creating virtual gridlock on local streets.

Parking was scarce at Bolsa Chica and other Orange County beaches, lifeguards said, but low surf meant few rescues.

“Everyone is being pretty well-behaved,” said Nick Cupaiuolo, a lifeguard at Huntington Beach State Park.

“This is the first sign of summer,” added Patrick Graham, a lifeguard at the neighboring Huntington Beach city strand.

In spite of the heat, about 16,000 people poured into Santa Ana’s Centennial Regional Park on Sunday to see big-name entertainment groups from Mexico, taste traditional food and shop for such items as straw sombreros. Organizers said there were about 6,000 more people at the park than on Saturday.

“There usually are more people on Sunday than on Saturday. The heat is no problem,” said Chris Arce, president of the Santiago Club, which sponsored the weekend Cinco de Mayo celebration. “Whole families would come here after church. On Saturdays, a lot of people work. Sundays are traditionally for families.”

People of all ages took cover from the heat in whatever shade they could find--whether it was under an umbrella or a wide-brimmed hat or in the shadows of trees and trailers.

“People are buying our hats because the hats are of our culture, but the heat also helped,” said 17-year-old Alma Fregoso, whose family sold about 1,000 of a variety of straw sombreros. “It’s tough being in the heat.” Near her feet underneath the concession, someone had left a baby sleeping on the shaded grass with the added protection of a small red umbrella.

Up on stage, performers had their own methods for dealing with the heat.

The Mariachi Los Galleros from Montebello wore bolero jackets and pants made of gabardine and not the traditional wool, said Pedro Rey, the group’s founder. Sombreros also helped keep the sun out of the eyes of the 15-member band, and, between songs, a woman came up on stage to spray a mist of cooling liquid on the performers’ faces.

In Costa Mesa, about 40 members of a church group didn’t seem to mind the heat as they played volleyball in the church’s recreation yard.

“We’ve got plenty of water and soft drinks,” said Robert Branch, 40, a member of the singles group at the Calvary Chapel. “The heat’s not bothering anybody. We’re having a lot of fun.”

In Los Angeles County, more than 500,000 people lined the shores from Marina del Rey to Topanga Canyon, according to county lifeguard Lt. Dick Heineman. That figure topped Saturday’s attendance of 395,000.

“It’s wild,” said Toby Johnson, a parking lot attendant at Venice Beach, who said somebody offered him $40 to park in his lot--four times the usual fee. “It’s like mid-August. The lot was full by about 10 a.m.”

In Santa Monica, an estimated 25,000 people jammed onto the newly reopened pier for a festive--and sometimes chaotic--Cinco de Mayo party. At one point, the elbow-to-elbow crowd jammed a staircase leading from the beach to the pier, bringing pedestrian traffic to a halt.

“There were more people going up than going down and the thing was so packed that some people were stuck in the middle there for 5 to 10 minutes,” said Scott Drummond of Van Nuys, who watched the scene from a pier restaurant. “It kept getting worse and worse. You could not go up or down. It just was stopped.”

Police, however, reported no problems.

Elsewhere in the Southland, away from the sand and surf, there were plenty of people who went about their business and simply tried to cope as best they could.

In Boyle Heights, a man sold watermelons from the back of his truck. In Rosemead, a pair of Caltrans workers picked up trash on the side of the freeway, sweat dripping down their faces from beneath their fluorescent orange hard hats. In Covina, suit-and-tie-clad car salesmen spent the afternoon inside their air-conditioned showrooms, coming out only when the occasional customer requested a test drive.

And in Long Beach, more than 4,000 runners participated in the Long Beach Marathon, which began at 7 a.m. with temperatures already in the low 80s--about 20 degrees higher than considered ideal for such a long race.

Spectators lined the streets and sidewalks of the city’s residential neighborhoods to cheer on the runners, many of whom beat the heat by stopping at “shower stations,” where they literally ran under shower nozzles that had been placed along the 26.2-mile course.

Meteorologists expect the heat to let up today, with temperatures locally dipping at least 10 to 15 degrees as a cool pocket of air that has swept into Northern California moves south.

By midweek, more normal temperatures are likely to return, with daytime highs settling into the mid-70s, and fog and low clouds returning along the coast.

According to Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., the weekend’s unusually hot weather was caused by a pair of high-pressure ridges centered over Central California.