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Los Angeles Wilts as Fall Heat Wave Makes Up for Cooler Summer
2010-09-28 04:00:17.0 GMT
By Michael White and Nadja Brandt
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Los Angeles residents, no strangers
to heat, are broiling as temperatures hit records in a post-
summer swelter. Schools canceled recess, firefighters aided heat
victims and the public poured onto beaches to cool off.
Yesterday's peak of 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) in
Los Angeles surpassed the previous mark of 112 degrees set on
June 26, 1990, Stuart Seto, a specialist with the National
Weather Service, said in an interview. It was the hottest day
since record-keeping began in 1877.
"There's hot, and then there's hot," said Byron Tyler, a
resident walking in Hollywood yesterday after lunch. He shared a
photo sent to his cell phone by a friend in the nearby San
Fernando Valley whose car dashboard thermometer displayed 121
degrees. "Looking at that I don't feel so bad."
The early fall heat wave has produced two consecutive days
of triple-digit temperatures, according to the Weather Service.
Downtown Los Angeles will drop to the mid- to upper-90s, Seto
said. Valley areas, some of which are within city
limits, will remain above 100 until Sept. 29.
"We've gotten many calls today that are heat related --
heat exhaustion, heat strokes," Mike Brown, battalion chief at
the Los Angeles County Fire Department said yesterday. "It's
happening all over the map."
Beaches were busier than usual for a Monday as people
sought to cool down, Brown said yesterday. Some motorists didn't
make it. Dispatch calls were running 14 percent higher than on a
typical Monday, said Jeffrey Spring, a spokesman for AAA
Southern California.
Cars Overheat
"We're averaging 2,000 calls an hour," Spring said in an
interview. "There are a lot of dead batteries because they tend
to give up when they're not in good shape in this kind of
weather. Overheated vehicles, where belts and hoses aren't doing
their job."
Tyler, a 47-year-old independent bookseller, said the
unprecedented heat may persuade him to turn on the central air
conditioning at home. It would be the first time in more than
two years. As others did the same, the city's Department of
Water and Power advised residents to conserve energy to avoid
overtaxing the grid.
"The power system is operating normally," Carol
Tucker, a spokeswoman for the department, said in an interview.
"There's currently no major outages that are heat related."
The Los Angeles Unified School District canceled athletic
events and other outdoor activities, invoking an "extreme
caution" policy that is triggered when the temperature reaches
95 degrees or above, said Gayle Pollard-Terry, a spokeswoman.
Late Summer
The 617,000-student district, the nation's second-largest,
will continue the precautions tomorrow, Pollard-Terry said.
Parents of elementary-school students are being asked to send
their children to school either with a frozen bottle of water or
a thermos of cold water, she said.
The heat wave follows a summer that was the second-coolest
since at least 1944, according the Weather Service.
The past several days have made up for it, said Brent
Toney, a 25-year-old actor who sat with a friend outside a
Starbucks, drinking iced coffees to ward off the heat.
"We didn't have much of a summer before," Toney said.
"Everyone who was complaining then is complaining now that
we're finally getting one."
For Related News and Information:
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--With assistance from Alan Ohnsman, Andy Fixmer and Rob Golum
in Los Angeles. Editors: Anthony Palazzo, Anne Reifenberg
To contact the reporters on this story:
Michael White in Los Angeles at +1-323-782-4237
or mwhite8@bloomberg.net;
Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at +1-323-782-4238 or
nbrandt@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Anthony Palazzo at +1-323-782-4228 or
apalazzo@bloomberg.net;
