Shortly after enduring a series of winter storms that damaged roads and flooded businesses, Southern Californians may be pleased to learn that blue skies and toasty temperatures are on deck as possible record-setting heat sweeps into the region this week.
A high-pressure system will bring significant warming to the Southland starting Thursday and peaking Friday, when daytime temperatures are expected to be in the upper 70s and lower 80s in most areas and into the 90s in the valleys, according to the National Weather Service.
“We’ll be sitting almost between 15 and 20 degrees above normal for the time of year,” said weather service meteorologist Todd Hall. “It’s abnormally warm and will probably stay warm at least through the weekend before we actually cool down.”
On Friday, the heat wave is poised to tie or even break several single-day temperature records in Los Angeles.
Forecasters are expecting the thermometer to reach 89 degrees in Burbank, breaking a 40-year-old record of 86 degrees that was set in 1986, Hall said. Downtown L.A. is expected to hit 88 degrees, which would tie the record high set last year, while Woodland Hills is forecast to reach 91 degrees, just under the 92-degree record set in 1986.
Temperatures are expected to be even hotter farther south in San Diego County on Friday, where forecasters are predicting temperatures up to 25 degrees above seasonal norms, with highs in the upper 90s in the low deserts.
“It is becoming increasingly likely that the weather may be TOO nice in parts of Southern California,” the San Diego weather service joked in a post on X. “Hazards include forgetting that it is February and general feelings of happiness.”
Onshore winds on Saturday will bring temperatures down a notch across the Los Angeles region, to 10 to 15 degrees above normal in many areas. Weather will continue to cool slightly on Sunday, with partly to mostly cloudy skies. Temperatures will, nonetheless, remain unseasonably warm into early next week, and there is no chance of rain in the near future.
This warm period comes a week after frosty temperatures and heavy precipitation across the state brought a dumping of snow to the San Gabriel Mountains, blanketed the Sierra in white and caused a deadly avalanche near Lake Tahoe.
A hot, dry stretch following a rainy, cold one is fairly typical in springtime in mid-latitude regions such as Southern California, Hall said.
“The atmosphere behaves a lot like an ocean,” he said. “The tips of the waves are called ridges and the bottoms of the waves are called troughs, and so the atmosphere flows just like water.”
In this analogy, troughs are associated with lower pressure and cooler, wetter weather, while ridges are linked to higher pressure and warmer, drier conditions — helping explain why cold snaps and warm spells often alternate.
