Hothouse Weather Continues to Cook Across the County

It was hot and muggy Friday and it’s due to stay that way all weekend--dangerously hot in San Diego County’s inland valleys and uncomfortably hot at the Miramar Naval Air Station’s annual air show, forecasters said.

Near-record temperatures Friday pushed electricity demand to a record high, San Diego Gas & Electric officials said. Smog levels reached unhealthy levels Friday along the county’s mountains, and Thursday’s dramatically heavy rains left mud oozing and baking on a Pauma Valley road, slowing traffic, police said.

Not, officers said, that anyone was in a hurry Friday to do much of anything.

“No one wants to move too much,” said Jackie Sturges, a California Highway Patrol officer, noting that there hadn’t even been the usual slew of accidents. “It’s just too hot.”

The official temperature Friday hit 87 at Lindbergh Field, two ticks below the record high of 89 set in 1889, according to the National Weather Service. The normal high temperature for the date is 78, the service said.

The county’s hot spot was Borrego Springs, where the high reached 106, the weather service said. The lowest high for the day was atop Mt. Laguna at just 77.

High temperatures around the county Friday were 98 in Ramona, 97 in Poway and Escondido, 94 in Campo, 93 in La Mesa, Lemon Grove and Alpine, 92 in Vista and, at National City and Miramar, 91. The high humidity--tropical moisture flowing around a huge high-pressure system stalled over the Nevada-Utah border--makes it feel even hotter, weather service meteorologist Dan Atkin said.

Worse yet, the sticky weather is likely to last for most of next week, Atkin said.

On the Tarmac Friday at Miramar, where the Navy’s Blue Angels performed a practice run for the weekend show, the temperature “was easily over 100,” the weather service said. More of the same is expected today.

Organizers expect well over 100,000 people at the show each day. The weather service urged anyone planning to attend to wear loose clothes, don a hat and drink lots of juice, soda or water. “People will be dropping like flies if they don’t take precautions against the heat,” Atkin said.

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Indoors Friday, the precaution of choice was air-conditioning, driving SDG&E;’s electricity demand to 3,193 megawatts, eclipsing the record of 3,069 megawatts set Oct. 10, 1991, the utility said.

One megawatt equals 1 million watts, enough power for 1,000 homes, the utility said.

Smog levels soared Friday to unhealthy levels in Alpine, which serves as the measuring station for the county’s eastern mountains, according to the county’s Air Pollution Control District.

The district issued a health advisory, its first since April, telling people sensitive to smog to be careful when doing outdoor activity in the mountains. Smog levels elsewhere in the county remained under unhealthy levels and well below the standards for a more-serious pollution alert, district officials said.

Mud continued to ooze onto California 76 Friday at the foot of Palomar Mountain, which received more than 6 inches of rain Thursday. While Caltrans crews cleaned up the mud, which seeped from an orange grove, Pauma Valley traffic was restricted in spots to one way, the CHP said.

The road--and two-way traffic--was due to be back to normal today, the CHP said.

The heat and humidity, however, are expected to linger through the weekend, reaching “dangerous levels” in inland valleys, with highs both days of 92 to 100, the weather service said. The humidity will make the temperature feel 10 to 15 degrees hotter, the service said.

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At the beach, the highs should reach 74 to 80, the service said. Highs along the coastal strip should be 82 to 90, and in the mountains 84 to 92, the service said.

The water at La Jolla Cove is off-limits today to swimmers, surfers and bathers, San Diego lifeguards said, because 1,200 gallons of sewage rushed through a broken storm drain and spilled into the sea during Thursday’s storm. The water should be clean enough for swimming by Sunday, lifeguards said.

Even the sea is unusually warm. Water temperatures hit 76 Friday at Solana Beach, 72 at Oceanside and 71 at Mission Beach, the weather service said.