Northern CA Summer 2024 SkiTracks and High Temps

I have a SkiTracks from hike under Heavenly gondola I could post, but it's not very impressive with barely over 250' vertical.

There was a dusting of snow at both Mammoth and Palisades Tahoe early last weekend. Storm dropped more snow further N with road through Mt Lassen National Park being closed with 4" and over 15" reported on Mt Shasta. Lassen "is in the process of a phased reopening following the Park Fire, and this snowfall is one of the final hurdles before the highway is entirely accessible again. The Park Fire has now surpassed 70 percent containment, a number that will surely increase following this unseasonable storm." The Park Fire which started near Chico over a month ago when guy pushed burning vehicle into a gully is now 82% contained after burning almost 430,000 acres, California's 4th largest fire ever.

After having the following temps at nearby wunderground station, we are in the first day of a (hopefully only) 3-day warmup with highs on my station and the nearly station of 98 today. With the earlier sunsets, we have usually been opening house by 7 PM and not running bigger fans at night. Mornings have mostly been in the low 50s.
8/19 88 (the day we returned from Tahoe)
8/20 94
8/21 90
8/22 81.5
8/23 81
8/24 85.5
8/25 90
We haven't run air since returning from Tahoe, but most likely will tomorrow afternoon. Our recent PG&E bill was $5 less than previous month.
 
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Did run air from 3:40-3:55 to cool down upstairs from 78 to 77 before electricity price rises at 4 PM. High on nearby weather station was 101 while mine reached 102 at 3:54. Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler and predicted San Jose Labor Day weekend temps 80, 78 and 80 Sat-Mon.
 
Last week's high temps were 98/101/98 on Mon-Wed then it cooled off to mid 80s highs over three-day weekend. This week's heat got hot fast and may last until Friday. The good news is that they're saying it may be the last blast of heat this year. Since our Tues low was 50, even though it went over 100 in PM, when I went upstairs before electricity rates rise at 4 PM it was only 75 there so I left air off.

While my weather station had high of 104, the nearby wunderground only got to 102.2.
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Edit to add that it could be worse as Phoenix had its 100th day in a row with high at or over 100. Previous record in 1993 was 76 days.
 
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Knew Phoenix was hot, but 100/100 is pretty insane. From late May until sometime well into Sep every day over 100F! Forecasted Temp today to be 108, tomorrow (5 Sep 2024) to be 111. Nothing less than 106 in next seven days.
 
Meaningless snowfall in the Colo mtns. Supposed to warm right back to summer temps by Sunday. So even blowing out the mice is not imminent. But makes for a nice news story:

ABasin chill
 
Today's high 3:02PM 104F
Today's low 5:50AM 50F
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I'm quite sure this has never happened in the 40 years I've lived in Glendale.

Over the weekend I was staying with a friend in the hills above San Mateo. He has a spectacular 180 degree view from the city of SF to the north to the south end of the bay. There's is a regular stream of planes coming in for landings at SFO flying SE to NW down the middle of the bay. When prevailing winds NW to SE are strong enough, the marine air will get all to way to tseeb's place. That marine air is way colder than SoCal's, so no surprise can drive temps even in summer as low as 50F. That marine air also gets through the pass from Half Moon Bay to my friend's house. Every morning I had condensation on my car.

I think tseeb's area is blocked by the Santa Cruz mountains from direct ocean air to the west. So if it doesn't come down the bay 50 miles from the NW, summer temps can spike up dramatically.

My area is 20 miles from the ocean but with no blocking mountains. SoCal ocean breezes in summer will cool down to the low 60's but almost never any lower than that. But overall I think tseeb sees more days over 100F than I do. My summer climate is more consistent, usually warm/continental during the day but ocean influenced at night.

Right now is a big exception to the above. We got home last night at 9:30 and it was 91F outside and 88 in the house where no one had been for 4 days. So that was our first time this year of running A/C all night long. Glendale and Burbank were like Vegas today: high 108F.
 
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Low temps here are in the upper 70's. With 4 more predicted days of highs over 100F, we may get a couple of them with lows over 80F.

This is not a Santa Ana wind situation. Most of the SoCal beach cities are staying below 90F.

We arrived home to similar weather in this same time frame in 2022 after our month in Scandinavia. It also happened in 2020, that time accompanied by the Bobcat Fire that closed Mt. Waterman the next season due to taking out its phone line. But in 2020 we didn't arrive home from Florida until Sept. 15.
 
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Most of the SoCal beach cities are staying below 90F.
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Spoken a bit too soon, perhaps. Temps at the weather station near my house about a mile from the coast in Redondo shot up to 91 before the sea breeze kicked in, and LAX set a daily record at 102. The morning air had the distinct desert smell of creosote and sage, a dead giveaway that it was going to get warm quickly. I work just south of there with no AC and yesterday was a struggle. Usually our large roll-up doors allow a good breeze, but it didn't arrive until 3 pm.

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I also have no AC at home, and this heat wave is looking like some of those 4-5 days a year with less than ideal sleeping conditions. Fortunately ocean temps are only around 70F, unlike a few years back when water temps near 75 kept humidity and overnight lows even higher. The heatwave in 2022 that Tony mentioned was associated with a tropical system that stalled and fell apart a few hundred miles to the south.
 
Yesterday was the peak for downtown Glendale at 111/80. And yes, yesterday was the day the heat pushed into most of the beach cities.
 
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Today's high 3:02PM 104F
Today's low 5:50AM 50F
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(Above were hi/lo temps from my weather station in SE San Jose.) I think 50 is the lowest as I've seen so far this Summer.
Tony Crocker said:
I'm quite sure this has never happened in the 40 years I've lived in Glendale.
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Tony Crocker said:
I think tseeb's area is blocked by the Santa Cruz mountains from direct ocean air to the west. So if it doesn't come down the bay 50 miles from the NW, summer temps can spike up dramatically.

But overall I think tseeb sees more days over 100F than I do.
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We are in a hot part of the Bay Area, but even though Tues (corrected as I had Mon, but it's hard for retires to keep track of days of week with holidays) was start of heat wave that was extended, we only reached 98 on Tues, Wed and Thurs. Nearby wunderground station was a degree or two higher and they don't get as low of lows as we get. Adding nearby wunderground station Sept high temps of 98+:
Sept 3 102.2
Sept 4 99.1
Sept 5 99.7
Sept 6 98.6 (my birthday)
Sept 8 99.1 (we left country)
Sept 23 100.9
Sept 24 100.6 (we returned the next day)
Sept 27 99.7
Sept 30 96? (start of another warm up)

As I've said before we sometimes have fog come from the S (Monterey Bay) and I've seen big waves of it clearing 3000' ridge to W, but not lately, We have not seen any fog this week and fog by the time it gets here can stop the convective cooling so lows are not as low.

From today's local paper:

"As the fourth straight day of temperatures that were forecast to surpass 100 degrees settled in over the hottest areas of the Bay Area, an added element came into the equation: Stickiness.

“It’s a wet heat,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brayden Murdock said Friday. “There’s no getting around it."

Temperatures that were expected to be 3-4 degrees cooler on Friday instead were likely to be just as high as they were the previous two days. The hottest spots in the region were expected to top out at about 101 degrees, according to the weather service, and a heat advisory remained in effect for most of the region until 8 p.m. Friday.”
 
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Monday was the 7th and last day of highs over 100F, with 5 lows in the upper 70's requiring running the upstairs A/C overnight. The cool sea air came in while we were at Tuesday's Dodger game so open windows were fine that night despite daytime high being 95.

I looked up recent summers for comparison. In 2023 we were home all summer as Liz was recovering from the two knee surgeries. The hottest spell was in late July with highs mid-90's and only 3 nights with lows 70-72, which is not warm enough to need overnight A/C for us. In 2022 there was a more severe heat wave with Aug. 31 - Sep. 9 being over 100F and 5 low temps of 80F or more. However, we did not get home from Scandinavia until late Sep. 4 so missed half of that one. The 2020 heat wave at the start of the Bobcat Fire was short but extreme: 2 days of 114F, but no others over 100F.
 
"Palm Springs has seen 76 days of temperatures over 110 degrees so far in 2024, including Friday.
The heat streak blows past the 2020 record when the city saw 66 days of 110-plus degree weather."

"It’s forecast to be the hottest weather recorded during the first week of October in San Francisco and Oakland in at least two years...
temperatures as much as 10 to 18 degrees above normal on Monday and 15 to 20 degrees above normal on Tuesday,
when the heat is expected to peak, “possibly” leading to record-breaking highs, "
Local TV weather predicted 108 for Gilroy Tuesday.
 
Once again they underestimated the length of our heat wave. Earlier in the week they said Tuesday would be hottest with Wednesday a little cooler.
Both my weather station and nearby wunderground got to 104 on Tues. On Wed my weather station shot up to 108 about 3 PM on and it's still over 100 approaching 6 PM. Good thing then sun sets earlier although heat stayed around well after sunset last evening. Nearby wunderground also hit 108 on Wed. Now they say heat advisory ends on Thurs at 11 PM. This hot weather is a little unusual in that Bay Area is as warm if not warmer than inland and some coastal Cities are also hot.
 
In SoCal this heat wave is nothing like the one 4 weeks ago. Highs are in upper 90's but lows mid-60's; open windows at night have done the job for 2 days so far.
 
We live in the hills above UCLA, it definetly hasn't been as hot as the last heatwave, but last night when we got home at around 930 it was still way too hot out for the windows to cool the house. Had to be in the upper 70s.
 
Meanwhile down here by the coast it finally cracked 70 today, for the first time in over a week. This locked-in shallow marine layer pattern is unusual for early fall, when we usually have our most consistently clear / warm days. It reminds me of Tony's comment in the fire thread about the later arrival of offshore wind season
 
snowtrekker said:
It reminds me of Tony's comment in the fire thread about the later arrival of offshore wind season
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Colorado as well has had what feels like a definite shift such that fall weather starts at least 4-6 weeks later than it used to. Sept was super warm this year in general and despite a couple of cool fronts it's mostly at least 10F above normal every day for highs, though overnight lows are definitely cooling off faster. Today should hit the low 80's on the front range despite frost on roofs in my neighborhood last night - that's a big temp swing considering no warm fronts or cold fronts.
 
socal said:
We live in the hills above UCLA, it definitely hasn't been as hot as the last heatwave, but last night when we got home at around 930 it was still way too hot out for the windows to cool the house. Had to be in the upper 70s.
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This surprises me a lot. During the current heat wave our upstairs is getting to about 78F when we open the windows 7PM and is down to 73F when we close them at 8AM. Something in the topography (perhaps the gap in hills from the L.A. River) pulls in the cooler air to us by sunset most of the time even when it's broiling hot during the day.

The Santa Monica Mountains run east-west and the cooling rarely gets over them and perhaps sometimes does not get to the Mulholland crest. When we drive over Kanan-Dume to Zuma Beach on a hot day, the 100+ valley temps do stay that way until you're partway down the Malibu side of the hills.
EMSC said:
definite shift such that fall weather starts at least 4-6 weeks later than it used to.
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I would never say that about SoCal. September has always been the month with highest probability of 100+ here. The Bel Air fire was in early November 1961 and I recall the 100 degree Halloween in 1966. Coastal northern California is even more skewed to early autumn being the warm season (due to decrease in fog) as I recall seeing in a climate chart at the Monterey Aquarium when I first visited it in 1990.

You can make the argument that the western continental climates that are averaging hotter summers are also extending that heat more into autumn. As noted before, that's probably what's cutting back September Santa Ana wind incidence here.

FYI after a 6 day break, Phoenix is currently on a new 12 day streak over 100F and expected to continue it for another week.
 
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Hoping our heat wave that was originally predicted to peak last Tuesday (10/1) is ending with last 100 degree day this Fall on Monday 10/7.
From nearby wunderground station that often is a little warmer during day and usually does not cool off as fast as my weather station:
9/30 99.5
10/1 104.2 My high was 104 at 3:04 PM
10/2 108.1
10/3 106.5 My high was 104 at 1:36 PM
10/4 100.8 My high was 99
10/5 100.6 My high was 99. I was at Golden Gate Park for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free concerts. It was cool before 2 PM and again after 6 PM.
10/6 104.5 My high was 100 at 2:46. We were at winery harvest party 5 miles N of Kings City, where high was 105. Kings City was 106 on Sun.
10/7 111.2 My high 102. Not sure why theirs was so much higher. Kings City was 102/57. We spent night in RV at winery N of Paso.
Average of first 7 days in Oct=105.1

A couple of sfgate articles on heat wave: https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/hottest-october-temperature-california-19821269.php starts with

"The calendar might say October, but over the weekend, large swaths of California experienced scorching temperatures that felt more like the hottest days of August. In the Bay Area, San Rafael reached 106 degrees on Saturday, far above the previous daily record of 94 degrees set in 2014, in just one example of the temperature records that fell up and down the state this weekend." and includes

"In the Coachella Valley, temperatures rose enough to set an ominous new record with statewide implications: The city of Indio reached the “highest, latest” temperature on record in all of California, according to the National Weather Service’s San Diego office. The so-called City of Festivals, home to the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, reached 116 degrees on Oct. 6, the hottest temperature ever recorded this late in the year anywhere in the state."

and https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/sf-surpasses-90-degrees-daily-october-heat-wave-19821886.php from 10/7 that includes

"San Francisco’s downtown reached 97 degrees, surpassing the previous Oct. 6 record of 94 set in 1992, according to the National Weather Service. It was the fourth day this month that the temperature downtown was in the 90s.

Also on Sunday, San Francisco International Airport hit 98, Downtown Oakland 100, Redwood City 102, San Jose 103 and San Rafael 107."
 
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