Summer begins:
Coast cool, mercury soars, sets records inland
Sweltering temperatures expected to continue, leaving people to look for ways to beat the heat.
Tuesday is the official start of summer, but Bay Area residents are already getting a taste of the dog days of August, with temperatures that broke records over the weekend forecast to stay sweltering in much of the region for the rest of the week.
On Monday, Bay Area residents were dressed in both sweaters and shorts, depending on where they were, as the National Weather service reported a 43-degree temperature spread at 1:30 p.m. when Half Moon Bay came in at 61 degrees and Livermore hit 104.
Keith Winston, 60, who lives in the Mission District of San Francisco — in an apartment without air conditioning — fanned his face with his hand as he walked through the Tenderloin on Monday afternoon.
Winston, an apartment maintenance worker, called the latest heat spell “very unusual,” especially after a Bay Area winter that seemed like it would never end.
Wearing a polo shirt and jeans, Winston paused in the shade to reflect on the heat. “It’s just unbearable,” he said. “All night long.” Sunday set a score of new temperature records around the Bay Area, with some shattered by more than 13 degrees, according to Jan Null, a Golden Gate Weather Service forecaster.
June weather started out gloomy but has suddenly turned sizzling.
“What made it so dramatic is that the first half of the month was very cool,” said Matt Mehle, a forecaster for the National Weather Service. “A week before this heat event, there were parts of the Sierra still receiving snow.”
San Francisco, San Francisco International Airport, San Jose, San Rafael, Hayward, Richmond, Oakland and Kentfield all broke daily heat records Sunday, he said.
“With the fog and low clouds hugging the coast and the Golden Gate, there are locations where it’s probably 20 degrees colder today than it was yesterday,” Mehle said on Monday.
Inland Bay Area temperatures were scorching, with Concord hitting 108 degrees, breaking a record of 97 set in 2001, said Null. Livermore also set a record, reaching 106 degrees.
Although things cooled off to the low- to mid-70s on Monday in San Francisco from a record high of 88 on Sunday, inland temperatures still remained hot with Calistoga in the North Bay hitting 101 and Los Gatos in the South Bay reaching 98.
The East Bay had scattered thunderstorms late Sunday night and into Monday morning, but forecasters said that wasn’t a driving factor in the slight cooldown in San Francisco along the coast on Monday.
“The fog is the reason it’s getting colder. Ocean Beach looks like a typical summer day. They’re sitting in the fog and the clouds,” said Mehle.
Forecasters aren’t expecting any more rain this week. Instead, temperatures will climb back up to around 80 in San Francisco by Thursday before Friday brings a cooling trend that will carry into the weekend, Mehle said.
Looking ahead, forecasters predict the average Bay Area temperatures will be above normal through the beginning of July, Mehle said.
The high temperatures that hit the Bay Area Sunday are part of a bigger pattern of hot weather throughout the West Coast and the Southwest, forecasters say. Tuesday through Thursday will be the hottest days of the year so far in Central California with temperatures forecast to be 107 to 113, the weather service predicts.
In Phoenix, where temperatures are expected to climb to a blistering 120 on Tuesday, American Airlines warned passengers the heat may cause flights to be grounded.
The regional heating trend poses challenges to power companies in California.
“We have to remember, not only is it getting warm in California, it’s getting hot in the Pacific Northwest, and it’s getting very hot in Arizona and the Phoenix valley — that also plays a role in how we manage our transmission system in California,” said Steven Greenlee, a spokesman for California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electric grid.
“The grid in the Western United States is interconnected and so if they have high loads on their transmission system, that also means we have less pathways that may be available to us to move electricity around,” Greenlee explained.
He added that California imports electricity to help meet peak demand, but when other areas are dealing with their own heat waves, it lessens the amount available to import.
Bay Area Air Quality Management District officials urged commuters to carpool or take public transit instead of driving in an effort to keep the air clear.
In the Bay Area, 113,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Company customers were impacted by the heat wave that began Friday, according to PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo.
At the Sunday peak, around 7:30 p.m., 43,000 PG&E customers were without power. By 3:30 p.m. on Monday, power was restored to all but 2,391 customers.
“The outage volume is going to make this the greatest single event since the great heat storm in 2006,” Paulo said of the heat wave that began Friday.
The utility expects more records will be broken this week, according to Rod Robinson, a PG&E employee.
“We’re expecting to set an all-time peak this Thursday,” he said.