Things Cool Off to Great Degree After a Sizzling Weekend

Southern Californians, bedeviled by torrid, record-setting temperatures over the weekend, had a lot less trouble keeping their cool Monday with a double-digit drop in highs and a return to a more normal weather pattern.

The high at Los Angeles Civic Center was 79 degrees, 18 degrees below the 97-degree topper recorded Sunday and 22 degrees below the 101-degree reading registered Saturday, breaking high temperature records for both days.

And it is expected to be even cooler today in the Los Angeles Basin, with a return of the familiar marine layer along the coast, producing night and morning cloudiness and hazy afternoon sunshine.

Meteorologist Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc. said a pair of high-pressure ridges centered over Central California and Utah’s Great Basin--which produced the weekend’s sizzling highs--has been replaced by cooler air moving southwest into Southern California.

As the weather shifted toward normal, so did the scene at Southland beaches, where hundreds of thousands sought relief from the weekend of “superheat,” as one forecaster called it.

On beaches from Venice and Santa Monica to Topanga Canyon, where an extraordinary pre-summer crowd of about 500,000 people collected Sunday, county Lifeguard Lt. Ira Gruber placed Monday’s total at a fraction of that.

“I’d say we have about 10,000 today,” Gruber said.

Up the coast, where an estimated 164,000 gathered Sunday on beaches from Zuma to Malibu, Senior Lifeguard Jim Jacobson said Monday’s crowd was “about normal” for a workday and while school is in session. He estimated that about 20,000 sunbathers showed up Monday.

Some Southern California water officials were surprised that water use held fairly steady and below expected levels over the weekend. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies about 60% of the water in a six-county area of Southern California, said its water deliveries peaked on Sunday at 7,369 acre-feet. Officials had anticipated that usage would exceed 8,000 acre-feet in the blistering heat.

Bob Gomperz, an MWD spokesman, said landscape watering can go way up on hot days, “and especially on weekends when people stay at home with their kids and tell them to go out and play in the sprinkler.”

In some areas of the Southland, water usage did go up over the weekend, but it began to head back to normal on Monday, officials said.

Water use in San Fernando slowed to near normal Monday after a near-record day Sunday, when more than 3.7 million gallons were used by the city’s 20,000 residents.

“Today is cooler and people just aren’t using as much water,” said Michael Drake, public works director. “But Sunday, everybody wanted water.”

Golfers at Van Nuys Golf Course teed off with determination Monday after Sunday’s sizzling 98-degree heat discouraged duffers.

“We had no-shows Sunday and a lot of people were just quitting, dropping out in the middle of the game,” said Randy Levenbaum, course manager. “Nine holes and that was enough in that heat. Today, I haven’t seen a dropout yet.”

The weekend’s hot weather also brought the drowning deaths of four teen-agers.

The victims were identified Monday as Kydieu Truong, 17, of Monterey Park, who was caught in a strong riptide at Hermosa Beach; Juan Martinez and Elias Caracoza, both 18 and of North Hollywood, who became entangled in weeds at Castaic Lake, and Orlando Gonzalez, 18, a Hollywood High School student, who drowned at Santa Fe Dam Park Recreation Area in Irwindale.

In Orange County, where more than 110,000 people showed up at Huntington Beach on Sunday, Lifeguard Supervisor John Blauer estimated Monday’s crowd at about 6,000. In San Clemente, about 4,000 people lounged on the city’s two-mile stretch of sand, as opposed to 15,000 on Sunday.

Orange County water districts reported substantial increases in water use during the weekend, but the high demand, water managers said, probably will not have an impact on overall supplies despite the current drought conditions.

“Demands have increased substantially, and especially during the weekend,” said Karl Seckel, assistant manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County. “We used up some of our water in storage, but it is insignificant compared to the amount used for the year.”

Seckel said it is difficult to assess what impact the heat wave has had on the overall water supply of Orange County.

San Diego also enjoyed a return to cooler weather Monday, with a drop of as much as 20 degrees in high temperatures.

Times staff writers Jeanette Avent, Stephanie Chavez, Richard Beene and Bettina Boxall contributed to this story.