Hot and Clammy : Errant High Pressure System Traps Heat, Boosts Misery Index

The “Bermuda High” is to blame for the Los Angeles hots.

Instead of hovering over middle America as it is supposed to, a high pressure system that originated in Bermuda is sitting stubbornly--even defiantly--over Nevada, causing this steam bath otherwise known as Los Angeles.

“It’s like a lid,” said meteorologist Stephen Burback of WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times. “It traps whatever air is there.”

And beneath the lid, everyone is boiling because the trapped air is not just hot, but humid--thanks to tropical waters from Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico and warm El Nino currents that surge north from near the Equator roughly once each decade.

How humid is it? Records show that it is humid enough this month in Los Angeles to compete with such notoriously swampy spots as Washington and St. Louis.

A heat-humidity index, used routinely in other parts of the country--but generally unknown in Los Angeles--tells how hot a body feels when heat and humidity combine. According to the index, a temperature of 90, combined with the humidity Los Angeles has been experiencing, feels like 100. And it goes up exponentially.

So Saturday’s 95-degree high at the Civic Center felt like 110. The temperature was just one degree short of the record 96 set more than a century ago, in 1885. Elsewhere, temperatures ranged from 73 at the Santa Monica Pier to 104 in Northridge, Woodland Hills and Monrovia. First-stage smog alerts were called in the east San Gabriel and Pomona-Walnut valleys, meaning the air was not only hot but very unhealthful.

“It’s been intense, real intense,” Los Angles Traffic Officer Ken Poma said during a lunch break at a fast-food outlet on Wilshire Boulevard.

Poma said he has noticed that people to whom he has given parking tickets this week have been particularly cranky. And in his wool uniform, he has not been too thrilled himself.

“Times like this, you gut through it,” Poma said. “It feels like noon by 10 a.m. and it’s staying hot all day and not breaking like it usually does.”

He is exactly right, according to meteorologists. Los Angeles’ trademark cool nights have gone AWOL.

Friday morning, the coolest it got at the Civic Center was 78, breaking a 1987 record by 10 degrees. On Saturday, the low temperature at the Civic Center was 75. The average low reading this August has been 70, instead of the usual 65-66.

Otherwise, the summer’s sultry heat has broken a lot of sweat, but no records to speak of.

The average high temperature at the Civic Center this month is 88, which is four degrees above normal.

Since the first of the month, the humidity has been a pretty steady 2% to 8% above normal. Over the last 30 years, the humidity during an August day has ranged from 55% to 84%. So far this August, humidity has been recorded at average levels of 44% to 87%.

“It’s a little more humid than usual,” said meteorologist Burback, who is in Kansas and cannot tell how clammy it feels to Angelenos unaccustomed to humidity.

Relief is on the way, albeit slowly. The forecast calls for more of the same today, with temperatures dropping a couple of degrees in the basin, with the valleys remaining at the 100-degree level.

Beaches will continue to offer a respite, with temperatures anticipated in the high 70s. That is where more than 855,000 people headed Saturday, county lifeguards reported.

On Monday, a gradual cooling trend is expected, Burback said.

That will be none too soon for most. There is no official measure of the grumpiness level, but people do seem out of sorts, in part because they have been tossing and turning all night.

“I can’t sleep,” said Billy Lee, 23, of Los Angeles. “I’m tired and cranky. I wake up all hot and sweaty.”

During the day, at least, Lee had some respite in the air-conditioned booth at a gas station on Normandie Avenue near Olympic Boulevard, where he works.

Others are coping with mixed success.

A dip in the back-yard pool does not always work because some owners report that the water is warmer than the air temperature.

One dump truck driver said he managed the heat by driving 55 m.p.h. to whip up some wind, but another likened driving down the road with the windows open to having a hair dryer blowing in his face.

As is customary during a heat wave, there has been a run on fans.

“Our stock is just about depleted--and most of our other stores are out too,” said Greg Silva, manager of Home Depot in Monrovia.

On the Westside, Builder’s Emporium Manager Sergio Delrazo has moved the fans to the front of the store, where they are selling briskly.

Supplies are low at the Northridge Target store, said a manager who declined to be identified. “Of course fans are selling,” she snapped. “It’s hot outside.”