LOS ANGELES – While people in some other parts of the country are watching the leaves turn a kaleidoscope of fall colors as they contemplate unpacking winter clothes, California is roasting under an autumn heat wave.
As high temperatures were ranging from the low 100s in Southern California to the 90s in the normally more temperate San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday, National Weather Service forecasters warned that was just a warm-up for what is coming this weekend.
So why is it so hot, anyway?
Blame the Santa Ana Winds, those chameleon-like gusts that start out icy cold in the Great Basin region of Utah and Nevada, but by the time they race across deserts and down mountain canyons and arrive in Southern California they are hot as ... well, you know.
So just how unusual is this?
Unusual but not unprecedented. Although temperatures for this time of year are normally in the high 70s, the record high temperature in Los Angeles on Oct. 3 is 108, set in 1987. “It’s hot but not record-breaking hot,” says Seto.
How are some people handling the heat?
Perry Mann, who dresses as a pirate and poses for pictures with tourists on Hollywood Boulevard may have come up with the most innovative solution. On Thursday, he packed his body with frozen water bottles and greeted people by telling them, “I’m frozen in ice from the Antarctic.” When the ice melted, he drank it. When it ran out, he went home.
While california bakes, what is going on elsewhere?
As Los Angeles County lifeguards prepared for hundreds of thousands of people to storm the beaches New York’s Fall Foliage report predicted that autumn leaves in the Adirondack and Catskill mountains could be at their most spectacular this weekend.
Meanwhile, parts of the Rockies and sections of Utah and Northern Nevada are under frost warnings.
