Some Towns Cool Toward Heat Wave

Who says it’s hot?

Not the residents of Borrego Springs, where the temperature reached 111 degrees Wednesday. If you want to talk about heat waves, they say, come back on a really hot day--when the mercury pushes above 120.

The red line on the thermometer on the outside wall of Ruth’s First Lady of Beauty hit 104 degrees Wednesday. That’s because the thermometer was in the shade.

Owner Ruth Gibbs sat comfortably in an operator’s chair watching a soap opera and waiting for customers in the shop, where she had the thermostat set at a relatively cool 80 degrees.

“It’s just another day here,” said Gibbs, 60. “The media tends to give the heat in Borrego a bad name.”

The town of 3,000 (8,000 during the winter tourist season) is perched at the perimeter of the Anza-Borrego Desert Park in eastern San Diego County, and regularly is counted among the hottest places in the nation.

It fell short of that honor Tuesday, although it was far hotter than Los Angeles, where the downtown temperature hit 99 degrees, and everyone, it seems, was complaining about it.

But in Borrego Springs, it was business as usual, as firefighters went through their regular practice wearing full gear and the schoolchildren spent a full day at school.

Few people walked the streets, but a steady stream of customers went to Circle Fence Food and Spirits, where owner Dan Bobren offered a swamp-cooled interior and a variety of drinks for sale.

“It’s not hot now,” Bobren said. “Two years ago it was 122. Any time it’s under 110, you don’t feel it if it’s dry like today.”

One place that made Borrego Springs seem cool Wednesday was Palm Springs, tagged by the National Weather Service as the nation’s hot spot with 113 degrees. Not that folks there were complaining, either.

“When I think of the 20-below-zero weather we’ll be having in Michigan in a couple of months, I’ll take this any day,” said Carol Morris, 45, a tourist from Armada, Mich.

Sally Jacks, who recently moved to Palm Springs from Bradenton, Fla., said she had nothing to gripe about. “I’d rather have this dry heat--even 113--than 95 in Florida with 95% humidity,” she laughed.

“What’s different here is you burn your buns on the leather car seats, burn your hands on the automobile wheel and burn your fingers turning on the ignition.”

How hot was it? So hot that even ice cream had to be consumed indoors.

“Nobody walks down the sidewalks eating ice cream cones in this weather,” said Derek Rothschild, 51, manager of Swensen’s Ice Cream Store. “The ice cream would be mush in seconds.”