We Roast While the East Shivers

In L.A., it’s too hot. Back East, it’s too cold. But the high-pressure ridge that divides us, meteorologically speaking, unites us in thoughts and actions.

We both think about our winter sweaters. Will we get to wear ours? Will they get to take theirs off? We both seek to protect our cars -- ours from the blistering sun, theirs from rock salt.

And nobody seems to want ice cream.

“All people want are brownies, chocolate chip cookies and coffee,” said Anna Stodden at the Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in the Georgetown section of Washington, where temperatures were in the low 30s. “It’s so slow I’ve been polishing the counter all day.”

Her cross-country colleague, Jong Lee at the Santa Monica Ben & Jerry’s, where it was in the low 80s, also voiced ice cream concerns. The problem: Even ice cream, straight up, isn’t enough to beat the heat. “People are ordering smoothies and shakes instead of ice cream,” he said.

Los Angeles closed out January with a record-breaking 91 degrees on Friday, making it the warmest January on record. But just as we have been really warm, the East Coast has been really cold, thanks to a stubborn high-pressure ridge that has been sitting over most of California for a month.

With the western ridge comes the eastern trough, and it’s been “a pretty big trough” all during January, said Kurt Kaplan, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “The trough imports cold air from Canada and, in this case, there’s been an arctic outbreak over much of the Northeast and Midwest.... Name a city, it’s frigid.”

OK, we’ll name a few.

On Monday, while Southern California hovered in the upper 70s, it was 12 degrees in New York, 2 below in Pittsburgh and 4 below in Chicago. By Friday, it had warmed to 37 degrees in Atlantic City, N.J.

“It’s terrible. We have been in a deep freeze. Today it’s not so bad, though,” said Barbara Gerson, hostess at the Hard Rock Cafe on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Every time customers walk through the front door, Gerson gets a blast of freezing air.

“I have to take my breaks near the heat lamps we use for the food, just to warm up,” she said.

She turned the restaurant’s thermostat up to 70 degrees.

Three-thousand miles away, Arnold Alonso, manager of the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal CityWalk, adjusted his thermostat to the same setting. His, however, was for the air-conditioning.

“Right now, no one seems to want to sit outside,” he said of the Friday lunch crowd. “Too much sun.”

“I’m sorry,” Gerson said to L.A. “I don’t feel your pain.”

Both in the East and West, temperatures drove people to home improvement stores.

The Home Depot store in Whitehall, Pa., has sold hundreds of heaters, thousands of shovels and enough rock salt to fill 15 tractor-trailers. The Palm City nursery in Santa Monica has sold scores of blooming azaleas, bougainvillea and sacks of fertilizer.

Jay Brew, bundled in a trench coach and scarf, pushed a hand truck loaded with 25 bags of rock salt to his car at the Whitehall store.

“I’m ready for spring,” he grumbled.

For Miri Kim, owner of Palm City in Santa Monica, spring arrived around New Year’s.

“Usually people don’t buy flowers in January,” Kim said, sporting a short-sleeved blouse. “But now they are buying very colorful flowers for outside.”

Then there’s the simple matter of daily routines. On both sides of the country, the weather has made them topsy-turvy.

John Bruel of Manhattan, who was in L.A. on business Friday, recalled theater tickets that have gone unused, dinners that have been canceled. It’s just too cold to venture out at night. Overnight Monday, it dipped to 8 degrees in Manhattan.

The weather has changed Tori Jones’ routine as well. To Jones, who sells real estate, it was too beautiful to stay inside Friday, so she joined a friend at Huntington Beach.

At Los Angeles International Airport, however, weather confusion raged among passengers. When East finally met West, the weather divide became clear as disembarking passengers found themselves looking like some kind of arctic aliens.

“I couldn’t figure out how to pack or dress,” said Beth Pocta of Chicago, clutching a big green-and-black coat. She left a 35-degree chill and arrived to a 91-degree greeting. “I think I packed too many wool sweaters,” she said. “I need to go shopping.”

Alyssa Concha, a 22-year-old student, stuffed her down jacket into a shopping bag the minute she arrived home in Los Angeles from New York.

“This was the worst winter,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave the house all week.”

She has no plans to head back East.

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Times staff writer Kishan Kumar Putta and Christina Gostomski of the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, a Tribune Co. newspaper, contributed to this report.