Forecast Calls for a Break in Heat Wave

Normally, Southern Californians are bundled up this time of year, as daytime temperatures hover in the 50s and 60s and storms pelt the region with rain.

Not this year. Unseasonably warm weather over the last several weeks has forced residents to crank up their air conditioners or head to the beach as dry Santa Ana winds have heated up the Southland.

But the pattern should change today, just in time to keep all those chocolate Valentine hearts from melting, as cooler temperatures are expected to bring more seasonal weather.

Temperatures should drop from the low 90s of recent days to 70 degrees today throughout the region, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“There should be a fairly significant cool-down this week,” Wofford said Monday. “We’ve had a pretty strong high pressure over Nevada, giving us offshore Santa Ana conditions.”

The highest temperature posted over the last week was 92 degrees on Wednesday at the Zuma Beach weather station in Malibu, Wofford said.

“We had several places near 90 that day, in Hawthorne, Woodland Hills” and elsewhere, he said.

Indeed, Zuma has seen a steady stream of surfers and beachcombers seeking relief from the inland heat, said Craig Maddox, a Los Angeles County lifeguard who works in Malibu.

But in recent weeks, the beach wasn’t the place to find a reprieve. Often during Santa Ana conditions, the hottest temperatures occur at the beach as warm air drifting westward from the desert is trapped over the ocean by high clouds, Maddox said.

He said it has been so warm that when he went out on a call at 11 p.m. last Monday, he checked the temperature gauge and it read 83 degrees. He wasn’t surprised. “We always have a period in the winter where it gets hot like this,” he said.

As ocean air begins to flow inland today, cooler temperatures should prevail, perhaps even bringing rain by week’s end, Wofford said.