Heat’s Not Just in the Head; It’s on the Map

For Javier Torres, who was spraying powdery insulation into the sweltering, dust-choked confines of some attics in a new subdivision in Desert Hot Springs, about 10 miles north of Palm Springs, the beach was something he dreamed about visiting.

Coated with itchy insulation dust and soaked with sweat, Torres, 24, estimated the temperature where he was working Monday at 115 degrees. “I heard on the radio that it could go as high as 125,” he said before the full heat of the day.

Torres said he used his imagination to avoid thinking about the heat.

“I pretend that I’m spraying snow,” he said. “It’s all in the mind.”

Actually, it’s in the geography.

At the pier in Santa Monica, it was mostly cloudy, with a high temperature of 67 degrees. In Palm Springs, it was mostly sunny, with a high of 117.

“That’s a difference of 50 degrees,” said Bill Patzert, a meteorologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge. “But that’s not really that unusual for this time of year. It’s all because of the ocean, and a dome of high pressure over Arizona.”

Patzert said air circulating around the high pressure was pulling warm, moist air into Southern California’s deserts and inland valleys, generating temperatures as high as 119 in Indio, 118 in Borrego, 116 in Hesperia and 107 in Hemet.

But surface water temperatures off the coast were mostly in the mid- to upper 60s, and air temperatures over the water were similarly cool.

Driven by onshore winds known as the Catalina Eddy, Patzert said, this cool marine air moved inland Monday until it bumped into the western edge of the high pressure, keeping coastal communities at or below normal temperatures for this time of year.

Coastal highs included 66 in Malibu, 69 in Torrance and Newport Beach and 71 in Redondo Beach.

In general, the farther inland, the higher the temperatures. The high in downtown Los Angeles was 81, three degrees below the normal high for the date. It was 82 in Santa Ana, 84 in Anaheim, 86 in San Gabriel, 88 in Pasadena, 90 in Burbank, 92 in Simi Valley and 94 in Ontario. The hot weather is expected to stick around inland through the week.

“The deserts and the inland valleys are being influenced by the high pressure,” Patzert said. “The coastal communities are being influenced by the Catalina Eddy.”

Nisha Ganatra, 31, who recently moved to Southern California from New York, said that as she drove toward the beach in Santa Monica, the temperature began to drop.

“It’s like getting off a hot subway platform in New York and into a cool, air-conditioned subway car,” Ganatra said as she eyed the leaden skies in Santa Monica.

“It’s kinda nice,” said Julie Lambery, 24, a San Diegan strolling the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. “I get cranky when it gets too hot. I’ve always been a fan of overcast.”

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this story.