Southern California sees another day of record temperatures as cooling nears

Four Los Angeles County cities had record high temperatures Sunday, but cooler days are expected beginning Monday.

Woodlands Hills topped out at 96 degrees, breaking the previous record of 93 set in 2016. Burbank and Lancaster hit highs of 93 and 83, respectively, and the mercury leaped to 79 in the hilly hamlet of Sandberg in the Antelope Valley, another record.

Sunday’s four records followed three new county highs and soaring temperatures Saturday. Burbank, Lancaster, Long Beach, Palmdale and the UCLA campus also established daily records on a blistering Friday.

Outside Los Angeles County, Palm Springs reached a record high of 93 degrees, while Big Bear registered a high of 74 on Sunday. Earlier in the weekend, Santa Barbara had a high of 86 degrees Saturday, while Camarillo and Oxnard both reached a record 95 on Friday. Santa Ana also saw a record high of 96 on Friday

The National Weather Service did offer some relief, tweeting Sunday that this was the “last really hot day across [southwest] California” during this recent Santa Ana wind event.

“Tomorrow will still be quite warm, but you can take about five degrees off the temperatures,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “We’re going to be firmly in the mid-80s starting Monday rather than ranging from the mid-80s to the 90s as was the case this weekend.”

Kittell said that on Monday and Tuesday, low clouds and fog will return to the coastal areas as temperatures continue to drop into the high 70s.

Temperatures should remain cool from Tuesday into Friday.

Santa Ana winds calmed and should remain so for the coming week, Kittell said.

On Sunday, the winds ranged from 15 to 30 mph. Kittell said the range continued to dip from 20 to 40 mph on Saturday, with the peak of 30 to 50 mph on Friday.

The dying winds meant no red flag fire warning.

“We reserve those notices for extreme events ,and we didn’t have the right combination to need to issue a warning,” Kittell said.

Kittell said winds generally must gust at 35 mph or higher, while humidity needs to dip to 15% or lower.

The cooler forecast was welcomed by Woodland Hills resident Jim Anderson, 85.

His town took center stage throughout the weekend as Sunday’s 96-degree temperature tied with Porter Ranch for hottest region in the county.

On Saturday,Woodland Hills tied Fillmore and Chino “as the hottest spot in the nation” with a high of 95 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Besides a whitefish run to Frank’s Weiler’s Deli in Canoga Park, Anderson said he mainly stayed indoors with the windows shut.

“It’s been a hot couple of days here, but that’s Woodland Hills,” he said. “It’s often hot.”

Though Anderson said he was slightly uncomfortable at times, the temperatures were nowhere near those of the Midwest native’s first November in California in 1983. He said the high back then reached 115 degrees.

Anderson even joked about the “cooling” this year in comparison with 2020. Woodland Hills set the Los Angeles record for hottest temperature Sept. 6 of last year with an all-time high of 121 degrees. That mark eclipsed the previous best of 119 degrees, also set in Woodland Hills in July 2006.

Kittell described Woodland Hills as “probably the warmest location within Los Angeles County” because of its distance from the ocean. While many cities enjoy cooling winds from the Pacific, Woodland Hills is “last in line” for such breezes, Kittell said.