In the San Francisco Bay Area we had a second day of record setting and record tying weather, third day of a heat wave that isn’t expected to abate until Wednesday or Thursday. Tomorrow is expected to be cooler by 4 or 5°F than today in most areas, and while that’s good news it still leaves some areas over 100°F.
Unlike yesterday, we have wind tonight—which means red flag fire warnings for areas not already on fire.
In addition, all day today we in the Bay Area were treated to the Revenge of the Sierra Foothills.
(a few choice salty words appear in subsequent paragraphs, so clutch your pearls)
Last week folk in the foothills were breathing smoke from our Bay Area fires. So today we’ve been breathing their smoke from the Creek Fire, which is the fire that caused Shaver Lake to be evacuated as well as surrounding over 100 campers at Mammoth Pool reservoir, who required rescue by helicopter. Our particle count all day over pretty much the entire San Francisco Bay area was over 150 ppm > 2.5 microns, which is unhealthy and likely to result in respiratory symptoms even for those without underlying conditions if exposed for 24 hours.
Unlike yesterday, there was some temperature relief at the beaches—not everywhere on the coast but at select locations, abating within the first mile away from shore. Some places were in the 70’s but most were in the 80s’ and a few remained in the 100’s. But this being a holiday weekend in the pandemic era, parking lots at many beaches were closed to discourage crowds. So not really much help available there unless you happen to live near the beach.
Unlike last night, there is expected to be some overnight temperature relief with the highest overnight low expected to be around 70°F, as opposed to overnight lows in the 80’s in some locations last night.
As a bonus round of “we are so screwed” for those who own a working AC (which I at present is not me), we were advised to set our thermostats above 78°F or risk rolling blackouts. A “stage 2 power alert”, they call it. This happens when the Independent System Operator (ISO) fails to correctly forecast the likely demand for energy and thus doesn’t contract to buy enough enerby from adjacent states to make up any generation shortfalls. So if you thought you’d just turn on your AC to end the suffering, you’re just as SOL as I am.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I wanted a thread for us all to just bitch about this current California environmental cluster-fuck. So please, reply with the conditions where you are in California or adjacent states also suffering from this weather pattern.