SAN DIEGO — Scorching heat in the West produced record temperatures Friday and is expected to linger through the weekend in some regions.
Hollywood Burbank Airport in the Los Angeles area matched its all-time high temperature with a reading of 114, according to the National Weather Service in Oxnard, California, which set its own record high for the date of 99.
Downtown Los Angeles tied its record high for the date at 111, it said. Santa Ana (113) and Newport Beach (95) in Orange County and Ramona (114) in San Diego County set new records for the date, weather service numbers show.
The weather service office in Phoenix said the 93-degree morning low temperature recorded at Sky Harbor International Airport was the warmest for any September day on the books.
In Yuma, Arizona, where records date to 1878, the desert town posted a high of 109 on Friday and thus bested its last streak of consecutive days with highs above 100 degrees, reaching 100 days of triple-digit highs this summer, the Phoenix office said.
Death Valley reached 119 on Friday, but it wasn’t a record, according to the weather service. In the Pacific Northwest, multiple inland locations, from Spokane, Washington, to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, recorded temperatures in the 90s, according to the weather service’s Spokane office.
Forecasters initially had heat alerts associated with the wave lasting through Friday, but some forecasters have extended them through the weekend and even Monday.
NBC News forecasters say 50 million people will be covered by heat alerts through the weekend. The National Weather Service’s alerts include a top level excessive heat warning, when conditions pose a significant threat to life, and an excessive heat watch, when temperatures will rise but timing is unclear.
Excessive heat warnings cover an area from Long Beach, California, nearly to San Luis Obispo County, according to weather service information and maps. Excessive heat warnings for much of the rest of Southern California, including San Diego, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, were to expire at 8 p.m.
Such warnings for the eastern half of Oregon were expected to expire at 10 p.m. Friday.
The California Independent System Operator, which manages California’s electricity grid, issued “restricted maintenance operations” requests to utilities that urged them to avoid scheduled maintenance from noon to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Friday.
The requests seek to ensure that no utility provider is off the grid during the high demand that comes with a heat wave. Otherwise, demand remained lower than capacity Friday, and voluntary conservation efforts under a program known as FlexAlert were not expected.
“The grid is stable and no FlexAlerts are planned,” Cal-ISO spokesperson Vonette Fontaine said by email.
A high pressure system over the desert Southwest is warming air and blocking the cool influence of the Pacific throughout the West. The weather service’s coast-to-coast forecast states the system will remain…
Read More: Record-breaking heat wave expected to extend stay in the West
