Southern California will face a double threat this week of a dangerous heat wave and, along the coast, hazardous high waves.
Southern California will face a double threat this week of a dangerous heat wave and, along the coast, hazardous high waves. The conditions are brought on by high pressure moving in from the east as well as the unusual path of Tropical Storm Elida, which is traveling northward in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to bring hazardous surf and strong rip currents to Southern California beaches.
High heat is expected to begin on Tuesday and last for seven days, with the potential for “major heat risk” by this weekend, according to the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. Dangerously high temperatures will also affect the Inland Empire, inland Orange County, the valleys in San Diego County and the deserts and mountains. By Wednesday, the thermometer could hit 105 degrees in Lancaster, 103 in Canoga Park, 98 in Santa Clarita, 95 in Covina, 89 in downtown L.A.
, 86 in Santa Barbara and Thousand Oaks, and 85 in Long Beach. Temperatures later this week are expected to exceed 100 degrees in the Inland Empire and in some areas of San Diego County’s interior valleys, and surpass 110 in the deserts, said Sebastian Westerink, meteorologist with the weather service’s San Diego office. Meteorologists also warned of the potential for critical fire weather conditions in interior areas starting Tuesday and lasting through Monday.
Forecasters warned of weak-to-moderate sundowner winds across southwestern Santa Barbara County in the late afternoon and evenings from Tuesday through Thursday. The hot, dry winds move down the southern slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains and risk spreading fires rapidly if there’s an ignition. Dangerous waves on the beaches were expected courtesy of Tropical Storm Elida, which originated off of southern Mexico.
Elida began moving in a more northerly direction a few days ago, and is expected to cause high surf. Forecasters warned of dangerous swimming conditions from Elida, especially on south-facing beaches, this week. Beaches could get surf heights of 4 to 8 feet. Orange County is already experiencing waves 4 to 6 feet high at its south-facing beaches, “with some sets 6 to 8 feet,” Westerink said.
“We’re anticipating those waves to kind of stay elevated through at least Tuesday. ” They might subside for a little bit, but another system — Tropical Storm Fausto — could generate “another set of elevated swell at our beaches later this week into the weekend. ” Fausto is moving west, which is typical as tropical storms generally follow warmer waters. But Elida is atypical in moving northward.
“Tropical systems need fairly warm ocean waters in order to survive, and it’s going to soon cross over from the warmer waters ... into the much cooler waters up north, closer to California,” said meteorologist Rachel Kennedy of the weather service’s Monterey office. “And once it makes that transition from the warmer to the cooler waters, it’s going to fall apart rapidly. So really, it’s just the remnants that are moving forward.
”Elida is expected to remain far offshore from California. A plume of moisture from the tail of the tropical storm, however, had already arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area on Sunday and was expected to last a few more days, bringing a chance of sprinkles or very light rain, with isolated lightning strikes, across parts of the Bay Area and Central Coast. The potential for that is greatest Monday morning and again Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
There could be some colorful sunsets and sunrises, said meteorologist Lamont Bain of the weather service’s Monterey office. The phenomena were observed earlier this month thanks to monsoon moisture coming from the south and bringing midlevel clouds. The setting sun illuminates the bottoms of those clouds and creates the beautiful sunsets. Tropical Storm Elida has been a factor in the rise in relative humidity in the Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay areas, weather service meteorologists said.
The marine heat wave of 2026 is simmering the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, and experts are warning that it could lead to a warm, humid and stormy summer.
“The conditions that we’re feeling at the coast — the kind of muggy air — is a result of our warmer sea surface temperatures,” Westerink said. “Like our beaches: I mean San Clemente, 76 degrees — that’s incredible — 74 at Solana, 72 at Newport. “The ocean has a very strong influence on the temperature of the air,” he added, “because it’s almost heating the air above it ... and it’s also giving it moisture and humidity.
So you just kind of feel an increased mugginess in the air. ”, current sea surface temperatures off the state’s coast “are among the warmest ever seen for this time of year, rivaled only by the wintertime anomalies seen during the strongest El Niño on record during 1997-1998, and the ‘warm blob’ years of 2014-2015.
” The marine heat wave isn’t even being influenced by El Niño at this time; El Niño’s effects will only begin to be seen in coastal ocean temperatures starting in the fall. Marine heat waves are present just off the Southern California coast and also much farther offshore, west of Oregon and Northern California.
The heat wave blasting into Southern California is being caused by a huge ridge of high pressure currently centered over Utah and Wyoming extending to the southwest, said Carol Ciliberti, meteorologist with the weather service office in Oxnard, on Sunday. High pressure causes colder air to sink in the atmosphere, where it compresses, warms up and dries out.
Avoid working outside in the extreme heat if you can, Ciliberti said, and if you do need to work, “you want to take frequent breaks in the shade as needed. ” People should stay in air-conditioned places if they can, and avoid walking your dogs during the peak heat of the day. The heat has continued to be hotter than average.
“And if we look over the last 12 months as a whole, the last 12-month period is actually the warmest on record for the lower 48 ,” climate scientist Zachary Labe of the nonprofit Climate Central said in a briefing last week. “So it’s been a very warm period in recent months, and really years, for that matter.
”Rong-Gong Lin II is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times based in San Francisco who specializes in covering statewide earthquake safety issues and other natural disasters, public health and extreme weather. The Bay Area native is a graduate of UC Berkeley and started at The Times in 2004.
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