California Bakes With Triple-Digit Summer Temperatures

(Bloomberg) -- While summer’s start is still weeks away according to the calendar, the season’s first wilting heat is pressing down on the West making California and the Southwest sizzle.

Temperatures will rise higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) in California’s Central Valley, including Sacramento, through Thursday. And with people working from home because of the Covid-19 shutdown, it means residential air conditioners will be cranking across the West.

Excessive heat warnings cover almost all of interior California, as well as southern Nevada and western and southern Arizona. But cool breezes off the Pacific Ocean will spare San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles from the worst of the heat wave.

“There is a ridge of high pressure centered along the West Coast,” said Bob Oravec, senior branch forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. “It is the perfect set up for hot weather at this time of year,”

A few miles inland will make all the difference, Oravec said. San Francisco will peak at 75 Tuesday, while San Jose reaches 98.

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