Wonderful Days Expected to Hold

If it’s possible to take a day off spontaneously and still have a job, this might be the week to do it.

The skies are blue, the weather balmy, and the beaches are empty, lifeguards say.

“It is gorgeous, but I think a lot of schools are back in session, and people are headed back home” after the holidays, said Huntington Beach lifeguard Claude Panis.s He estimated Tuesday’s crowd at a middling 5,000 or so, down from about 40,000 on New Year’s Day. “Just us lifeguards and surfers out here,” he said.

Temperatures just a few degrees lower than Tuesday but still in the middle to upper 70s are expected throughout the week, said meteorologist Rob Kaczmarek of WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times.

“What you see is what you’ll get for a while,” Kaczmarek said.

Except for the wind. The strong Santa Ana winds that brought the warm weather along with some chaos will not return this week, he said.

Tuesday’s high in Santa Ana was 78 degrees, 2 degrees shy of the record high in 1980, Kaczmarek said. The coolest spot in Orange County was Newport Beach, with a high of 66 degrees.

While a blustery storm dumped a foot of snow in the Midwest, some visiting Northwestern University fans hit the beaches here.

“It’s sunny, everyone’s running around in their bathing suits, getting tan--in January,” said Newport Beach lifeguard Mitch White, who saw several purple-clad fans proclaiming their allegiance on their shirts. “This is one of the best January days that we’ve had in a long time.”