Clear, bright sunshine this early Saturday on California’s north coast — a few-days spread of some warm weather, maybe in the mid-80s this weekend, though, ocean breezes keep our temperatures mellow near the shoreline.
Yet lose the breeze, lose that swagger and cool — which happened yesterday, winds were near none-existent, with the afternoon
unusually still and warm. Not a rare scenario, but just sort of curious.
Since conditioned for that soothing ocean breeze, its absence is truly recognized — actually at one point, it might have felt close to being ‘hot.’
While feeling some hints of guilt being here in such a pleasant temperate zone, I can empathize, more than once have dwelt among them as down south its cooking.: ‘By mid-afternoon Friday, it was 99 degrees in Long Beach, the same as the temperature in Death Valley, California, which calls itself the hottest place on the planet.’
(Illustration: ‘Heat Wave,’ by Dan Purcell, found here).
According to the NWS, this heat-wave weather is caused by a ridge of high pressure aloft, creating a kind of dome over the western US, thus, temperatures climb 10-to-20 degrees above seasonal averages. And even into the moderate, ocean breezes of the Bay Area.
This situation is like pouring gas on a fire — in the jaws of a record-drought, heat can only do what?
And part of the package.
From Think Progress yesterday:
On Thursday, downtown Los Angeles reached 92 degrees by noon.
The average October temperature for Los Angeles is 79 degrees.
Several cities in Southern California broke record temperatures.
Oxnard reached 98 degrees on Thursday, breaking an almost 70 year old record, while Santa Barbara saw a new high of 94 degrees.
Inland temperatures are expected to be as high as 106 over the weekend.
The record high temperature for the Los Angeles area is 108 degrees, which occurred in 1987.
And it’s not just high temperatures that Californians are facing.
Fire warnings have been put place throughout the Los Angeles area, thanks to the high heat and winds that could reach 50 miles an hour.
The Los Angeles Fire Department has pre-deployed firefighters in high risk areas, including the University of California Los Angeles campus.
The Los Angeles county fire inspector Randy Wright said that people should be prepared to evacuate.
Earlier in the fall, the King fire in Eldorado National Forest in Northern California burned over 97,000 acres and required over 8,000 firefighters to combat it.
…
The heat waves in California may be part of a larger pattern.
Earlier this year, California broke a 120 year record for heat, with temperatures 4.6 degrees hotter than average.
Climate scientists believe that the higher-than-average temperatures are strongly connected to man-made climate change.
A report by American and British climate scientists found that human-based climate change has “clearly increased the severity and likelihood” of heat waves.
And that’s the difference between ‘hot,’ and, ‘hot!‘