Keep Your Woolens in Storage Awhile

Though the calendar shows us well into fall, you’d hardly know it by the heat wave baking Ventura County.

And don’t even think about pulling out the wool sweaters any time soon.

Meteorologists say the unseasonably high temperatures will drop only slightly, beginning today.

“It will be a bit cooler today, maybe in the upper 80s in some areas,” said John Sherwin, a meteorologist with Weather Data Inc., a private forecasting firm. “It doesn’t sound a lot cooler, but at least it’s not the mid-90s” at the coast.

Sunday’s temperatures in select county hot spots made the record book.

With the thermometer at 104 for the second consecutive day, “Oxnard Airport is the winner again,” said Stuart Seto, a weather specialist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

The last time it was so hot in the Oxnard area was in September 1939, Seto said.

The eastern end of Oxnard also set a record Sunday, where temperature gauges near the Procter & Gamble paper plant registered 98 degrees. That beat the former high of 91 on the same date in 1981.

Simi Valley soared to 96, beating that city’s former Nov. 2 record of 94 degrees, set in 1966. And Ventura reached a record of 95 for the date, surpassing a high of 93 in 1966.

The region’s broiling heat stems from upper-level ridges of high pressure over the West Coast, weather officials said. The wind is pushed down mountain ranges, becoming hotter upon its descent.

A storm brewing in the Pacific is weakening the West’s high-pressure system, which is being credited with bringing down the mercury today, Sherwin said.

Based on a combination of computer models and his own knowledge of the county’s terrain, Sherwin predicts that temperatures will be near 92 degrees in Camarillo today, 94 in Thousand Oaks and 97 in Fillmore.

When can we reach for a jacket, or at least a long-sleeved shirt? Sherwin doesn’t know.

“It’s Southern California. You can be really hot or you can be cool and rainy. It’s chaotic. It’s nature.”