Those Fleeing Heat Get Too Much of a Good Thing at the Beach

While hundreds of thousands sweltered under a Santa Ana condition that pushed temperatures well above 100 degrees in some Los Angeles-area communities for the second straight day, there were a few--some of them lucky, some of them just sneaky--who found respite at the beach.

Charles, 29, Heather, 16, and Mary, 17, were among those at the Santa Monica Pier who preferred not to tell anyone their last names.

“I’m supposed to be at work in Lancaster,” Charles admitted with a sheepish grin. “It’s too hot out there today to work.”

“We, well, you know, are kind of supposed to be in school,” Heather said with a nervous giggle as Mary, her San Fernando Valley high school classmate, stood by apprehensively. “Instead, we’re, ah, here.”

Rhonda Dinges, 25, of Kalamazoo, Mich., didn’t feel guilty at all--she’s out here on vacation with her husband and their two young children. But she was a little disappointed.

No one had told her that the hot, dry winds scouring the inland valleys would die out short of the coast, leaving a dense overcast blanket at many of the beaches.

“We’ve been staying in Woodland Hills, where it’s hot, so we brought the kids here to cool off a bit,” she said as she peered through the murk at Santa Monica. “I expected some smog. What I didn’t expect was all this fog.”

Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said it’s all because of “a classic Santa Ana condition” generated by a massive high-pressure system spreading across the desert Southwest.

Brack said high pressure inland generates winds that head toward the lower pressure over the cool ocean. The down-slope winds heat and dry out by compression as they sweep down mountain passes.

High temperatures Monday reached 106 degrees in Monrovia and Woodland Hills, 105 in Van Nuys, 103 in Burbank and Ontario and 102 in Glendale, Pasadena and San Gabriel.

It was 96 at the Los Angeles Civic Center, which is plenty warm, but still 10 degrees below the record for the date of 106, set in 1963. It was plenty dry, too, with relative humidity ranging between 14% and 48%.

Skies were clear and sunny everywhere except at the immediate coast, where the offshore winds stagnated and the high pressure aloft pressed the usual assortment of scattered clouds down into a flat strip of dense fog along the waterline that reduced visibility in some places to a few hundred feet.

“I came here for the sun,” said Ben Samuelson, 43, a visitor from New York City, as he huddled beside a beach ball on the sand at Santa Monica. “This is definitely not what I came here for.”

Temperatures at the beach were cooler than inland but still a bit above normal for the date, with high readings of 78 in Redondo Beach, 71 in Newport Beach and 66 at the Santa Monica Pier.

Brack said the high-pressure system should break down over the next few days, but temperatures are expected to remain above normal for the next week or so.

Highs from the mid-90s to about 100 degrees are expected in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys today with a top reading at the Los Angeles Civic Center of about 92.

Top readings a few degrees lower are predicted for Wednesday.