Sunny Day Lures Many Out to Play

Southern California residents stowed their umbrellas and stormed area parks and beaches Saturday as a blast of sunny, unseasonably warm weather broke what seemed to be a monthlong curse of rain-soaked weekends.

Saturday’s temperatures were balmy with highs of 84 degrees in Anaheim, 83 in Fullerton and a slightly cooler 65 in Newport Beach, said Amy Talmage, a meteorologist with WeatherData, which provides weather information to the Los Angeles Times.

“Those are all above normal temperatures for this time of year,” she said, although they weren’t quite high enough to break records.

The warmer temperatures are expected to last through Monday, with normal temperatures in the mid-60s expected to return Tuesday, Talmage said.

The change in weather brought a big surge in attendance at the beaches.

An estimated 35,000 people basked in the sun and camped out in the sand at Huntington Beach on Saturday, said Lt. Mike Beuerlein, operations supervisor for Huntington Beach lifeguards. That was up from 5,000 last Saturday.

“We had one of the nicest days of the year,” he said. “We had a very good crowd with a lot of people breaking out from cabin fever coming down to enjoy a fun day at the beach.”

As the noontime temperature hit 77 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and 70 at Los Angeles International Airport, crowds migrated to beaches and places like Griffith Park and the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino.