Summer Heat Makes Business Sizzle for Merchants of Cool : Weather: Temperatures in the 90s and rising humidity send hordes in search of fans, ice and other forms of relief.

As the mercury soared above 90 degrees in parts of Orange County Monday, merchants who make money off the heat were sweating to keep up.

“We’re swamped,” said Maurice Maio, whose air conditioning repair service got more than 300 calls from Orange and Riverside counties Monday. “We had the June gloom, and now we get the big surprise. We’ve been waiting for this.”

Southland residents should not be shocked by the swelter. After all, “it’s July,” pointed out meteorologist Rick Dittman of WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times. “It’s supposed to get hot once in a while.”

The high temperatures will continue, Dittman said, and there is a chance of thunderstorms, mainly in mountainous areas, Wednesday through Saturday.

The county’s hottest spot Monday was Lake Forest at 93 degrees. The high reached 92 in Anaheim and Irvine, and topped out at 88 in Santa Ana. The coast was also warmer than average, with high temperatures of 74 degrees in Newport Beach and 72 in Huntington Beach.

This week’s heat, humidity and potential rain come from Hurricane Darby, which was about 250 miles West of Baja California on Monday, Dittman said. The hurricane is moving northwest, away from Orange County, Dittman said, but the storm is bringing heat and uncomfortable humidity to a wide area. The good news is better surfing conditions, he said.

“I’m expecting it to be hot,” the meteorologist predicted for today. The temperatures should drop after that, “but it will feel just as hot because of the humidity,” he said.

Like Maio, other heat-dependent business owners were glad to hear the forecast.

“We like hot weather; we like weather like this,” said Dave Sarin, owner of Santa Ana-based Mel-O-Dee Ice Cream. With about 30 trucks hawking ice cream novelties, soda and chips, plus a wholesale business supplying cool snacks to stores, Mel-O-Dee thrives as the temperatures rise. “We hope it lasts for two months,” Sarin said.

“Hot helps,” agreed Michael Hemburger of The Trading Post, a ceiling-fan store that reached its average daily sales in the first two hours of business Monday. “They put it off and put it off, and when it gets hot we get bombarded. Everybody comes in at once.”

To make summer shopping more pleasant, The Trading Post serves customers iced tea. “When they walk in, they’re saying this is the place to be,” Hemburger said of the Huntington Beach store, with its 100 display fans whirring overhead.

Coming on the heels of the July 4th holiday, Monday’s heat caught some people off-guard. “All the stores are out of ice because they sold out on Saturday,” said Ken Ackerman, general manager of ABC Ice Co. in Laguna Niguel.

Rushing to fill orders from area restaurants and grocery stores whose ice machines were emptied over the weekend kept Ackerman’s fleet busy. “We’re all going crazy,” he said.

Despite the frenzy, the ice man described Monday’s weather as “perfect.”

Explaining that ice-making machines can’t keep up when the thermometer hits 100, and that business increases about 5% for every degree of summer heat, Ackerman said, “the 90s are good. When it goes above 100, it’s crazy.”

As cooling companies flourish, though, others suffer.

Shirley Kontos of Cal Custom Roofing in Orange said the heat makes it especially tough to spread hot tar and gravel atop buildings. “If it’s 85 (degrees) down below, it’s like 120 up there,” she said. “We have (roofers) almost melt away up there every summer.”

Greg Kyle, a supervisor at Paradise Painting of Villa Park who spent all day with his two-man crew working on the exterior of the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, said Monday was “definitely very hot” but that “summertime is part of the game.”

Still, Kyle is not looking forward to more of the same. “By Wednesday or Thursday it really starts beating down on you,” he said. “You wish you were doing something else.”

Turning Up the Heat

A temperature of 80 degrees is normal for this time of the year, but the past two days have seen the mercury reach well above that average:

Readings shown are for Santa Ana.

Date Temperature Average 7/02 78 80 7/03 77 80 7/04 78 80 7/05 89 80 7/06 88 80

SOURCE: Weatherdata