That’s Life in the 90s : Weather: A sweltering summer day looks better from the beach. The cooling marine layer is marooned offshore. Expect more heat today, lower temperatures Wednesday.

As inlanders oozed sweat through their clothes Monday, lifeguard Ty Lunde peered from his pleasant vantage point at the Newport Pier and declared it a perfect summer day for the beach.

“It’s hot and we’ve got clear skies,” Lunde said. “We’ve even got a pretty good swell running, about 4 to 6 feet at the best places, between 48th Street to the Santa Ana River jetties.”

But for those away from the coast, Monday was just plain hot, a sweltering dog day of late August in which temperatures hit a record 99 at Los Angeles Civic Center and reached the mid-90s throughout much of inland Orange County.

Meteorologists were calling Monday a “borderline Santa Ana condition” in which the hottest temperature in Orange County was 96 degrees reported at 2:52 p.m. in Anaheim.

It was 94 degrees in Santa Ana, only one degree shy of matching the city’s all-time high of 95 set in 1983, according to WeatherData, which tracks weather conditions for The Times.

Meanwhile, it was a milder 73 degrees at Newport Beach, 79 degrees in Dana Point and 84 degrees in Laguna Beach.

In many places locally, the mercury was more than 10 degrees above normal for this time year, when the typical range is a low of 62 and a high of 84, according to WeatherData.

Meteorologists blame the intense heat, which is expected to continue today, on the lack of a cooling marine layer.

Instead of sweeping inland, the marine layer of cool air has been staying offshore, allowing temperatures on land to rise to nearly 90 degrees by noon through most of the county, said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist for WeatherData.

“What is happening is you are getting no cooling from the sea breeze off the ocean,” Brack said. “That allows temperatures to warm to their maximum extent.”

The searing heat is not good news for firefighters, said Capt. Dan Young of the Orange County Fire Authority.

This time of year, the brush and vegetation have become dry and brittle and people should be thinking about wildfires, Young said.

“We are knee-deep in fire season right now,” Young said. “And we are on the verge of what has been historically the worst time for fires. From now right through until November we will begin having the Santa Ana winds that have spread nearly all our major fires.”

Brack predicted more sweltering weather today, with temperatures to remain in the mid-90s around the county.

A welcome cooling trend with temperatures back in the mid-80s and morning clouds and fog along the coast should arrive by Wednesday, thanks to the marine layer’s anticipated return, Brack said.

Overnight lows should stay in the upper 50s and 60s all week, he added.

There is no good news on the horizon for surfers, however, said Kevin Noonan, a spokesman for Huntington Beach-based Surf- line/Wavetrak, a surf forecasting company.

The swell from the southwest Pacific and Tropical Storm Gil that arrived over the weekend was tapering off Monday and there was little surf in sight, Noonan said.

“It’s definitely going down,” said Noonan. “It looks really small for tomorrow and the rest of the week.”

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Hot Air Monday’s high temperatures were caused by a low-pressure front moving through the Pacific Northwest that stilled ocean breezes and sent Orange County beach cities’ mercury soaring. How the heat developed: *

* Front moves from Alaska toward Western U.S. * Southern end of front blocks onshore breezes, burns off coastal marine layer * Existing marine layer remains offshore Outlook: Cooling by Wednesday; temperatures in mid-80s with morning clouds and fog along the coast *

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Monday’s High Temperatures Anaheim 96 Dana Point 79 El Toro 84 Laguna Beach 84 Newport Beach 73 San Juan Capistrano 88 Santa Ana 94

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Santa Ana Comparison Record high 95 (1983) Normal high 84

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Source: WeatherData