August Bake-Off : There’s Not a Cloud in the Sky and No Relief in Sight From Near-Record Heat

The sauna that is August in Southern California set in with a vengeance Thursday, baking the Downtown Los Angeles skyline in a haze of near-record heat and boosting temperatures in the valleys past the century mark.

In Van Nuys, it was 107 degrees by lunchtime, and by late afternoon, Newhall, Ontario, Burbank, Irvine Ranch, Woodland Hills, Monrovia, Pasadena, San Bernardino, Hemet, Malibu State Creek Park, Fallbrook and Riverside, among others, had all broken 100 degrees.

Meanwhile in the deserts, Palm Springs--116 degrees--was shimmering like downtown Dharan. The state high was, of course, in Death Valley, which hit 121 degrees.

“It was steaming hot,” reported 12-year-old Alicia Viramontes of Whittier, where the mercury was still hovering around 94 degrees as the dinner hour neared.

“We wanted to lay out and get a tan, but, like, every five minutes we had to jump back into the pool.”

Even the usually temperate coasts were wretched. Beach-goers seeking breezy respite up and down the Southern California coast were greeted instead with blasts of 90-degree-plus heat. Temperatures in balmy San Diego hit 86 degrees, breaking the second local heat record in two days.

Marty McKewon, a meteorologist for WeatherData, Inc., which supplies weather information to the Times, said the heat wave is due to a strong high pressure system that is expected to stick around at least through today.

The system, he said, is supposed to be over the Texas Panhandle this time of year, but instead has migrated westward.

“What we are seeing is that the ridge of high pressure began to drift on Wednesday,” McKewon said, “settling over the Four Corners area where Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado meet.”

Because the system suppresses the downflow of air, it inhibits the formation of clouds, “allowing full solar heating over the Southern California area,” he said.

To make matters worse, the offshore airflow that normally moderates temperatures is almost nonexistent.

“It’s common in the summer to have a low pressure system over the deserts and this causes air to blow in from the ocean toward the lower pressure,” McKewon said. “This cools off the coast and to a certain extent, the valleys.

“But the air mass is basically stagnant right now. You’re just getting intense heating.”

The heat, McKewon says, probably will stick around for a few more days.

“We expect the hot weather to continue through the weekend,” he said.

The Los Angeles Civic Center--which hit 97 degrees Thursday, one degree shy of a record set in 1879, will probably cool by a degree or two through the weekend, but not by much more, he said.

The valleys can expect highs from the low 90s to 100 degrees or more.

“I’d say we can expect temperatures to be lower by about three to five degrees . . . (in the valleys) on Friday and through the weekend,” said McKewon, checking his computer.

“About the same for Monday and then it looks like we’ll start getting back to seasonal temperatures around Tuesday.”

The beaches, however, should begin to cool off over the weekend, with temperatures heading back down to the high 70s and low 80s, he said. Nighttime temperatures should also begin to get more comfortable along the coasts, he said, dropping from the sticky levels of recent nights to the low- to mid-60s.

Meanwhile, McKewon said, subtropical moisture associated with the high pressure system is expected to trigger thunderstorms today and through the weekend in the inland deserts, hitting first along the Arizona border and possibly spreading as far west as Palm Springs.