The first four months of 2014 were the hottest on record for San Diego
HOT HOT HOT
Extended heat wave grips county, pushing aside the traditional May gray
By Karla Peterson5:06 A.M.MAY 13, 2014
How hot was it in San Diego on Monday? Not as hot as it will be today. And Wednesday. And Thursday.
Monday’s high was 88, which tied the record set in 1979. With temperatures over the next few days expected to reach the mid-90s on the coast and the low-100s inland, the heat is on. And it’s going to stay on until the weekend.
“We are going to have a lot of heat and very low humidity and strong winds through Wednesday, and then we will have the heat and low humidity through Thursday,” said Brandt Maxwell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “We may get a little cooling near the beaches on Thursday, but most areas won’t start to cool until Friday.”
The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for today through Thursday for the coastal areas and for Wednesday and Thursday for the valleys. Due to the heat, low humidity and gusty winds, the service’s red-flag warning for extreme fire danger in the inland valleys and mountains has been extended through Wednesday.
Temperatures are 15 to 25 degrees above normal, and the weather service expects record daily highs in some parts of Southern California.
The winds will be strongest in the mornings and early afternoons through Wednesday. They are expected to weaken on Thursday, but we won’t get a real break in the heat until Saturday, when low clouds and fog will cool temperatures down to the 70s on the coast and the 80s inland. Sunday should bring temperatures in the mid- to low-70s throughout the county.
“The areas of high pressure have been really, really strong, and the low-pressure troughs have been really strong,” Maxwell said. “That’s why we have been getting the strong swings between the hot weather and the cool weather.”
Perhaps we should be used to this by now. The first four months of 2014 were the hottest on record for San Diego, and our late-April/early-May heat wave brought some of the highest springtime temperatures in history.
Even before this latest round, San Diego managed to rack up four 90-plus degree days so far this year.
And what about that May gray that usually brings clouds to the beach and complaints from tourists and locals alike? We could use a little of that this year, but we may not be getting it. May is normally San Diego’s second-cloudiest month, but four of the first 12 days of May brought no clouds at all, with eight days classified as partly cloudy and no days classified as cloudy.
“At this point, we don’t see any extended May gray happening, at least for the next seven to 10 days,” Maxwell said.
With the worst heat yet to come, people in San Diego County did their best on Monday to keep their cool.
In Alpine, where temperatures also reached 88, an Alpine Elementary School competitive dodgeball game was relocated to the indoor auditorium, whether the players knew they needed it or not.
“They only complain if they’re bored,” Principal Jon McEvoy said. “Kids are resilient.”
Cafeteria worker Linda Reese said she was selling more juice and water than usual, but attendance clerk and health aide Corinne Lewis still expected the heat to take its toll.
“They’ll all come in (after recess) and have headaches. They get dehydrated from playing, and they don’t realize that when it’s that hot that they need to drink more.”
At Lindo Lake County Park in Lakeside, baby sitter Melissa Gomez, 19, was hanging out in the shade with 17-month-old Aileen and a blanket stocked with plenty of snacks and drinks. It was 87 degrees at 4 p.m., and she wasn’t taking any chances.
“It’s unbearable in the house right now. I don’t live far away, and even the walk here, it was too hot,” Gomez said. “You can even see the ducks are in the shade. There aren’t many of them in the water with the sun so hot.”
What Gomez needed was a whole different park. In Balboa Park, the temperature was a few degrees cooler, the breeze was kinder, and Lisa Heilmann was a lot happier than she would have been at home, in El Centro. (High on Monday? 90 degrees.)
“This is nice weather here. I love it,” Heilmann said, splashing her feet in the Bea Evenson Fountain in front of the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. “The real heat wave will be in El Centro, and there’s no water in sight. It does worry me. When you live there, your brain slows down because of the heat.”
Staff writers Robert Krier and Karen Pearlman contributed to this report.
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