Southern California residents can expect breezy and slightly cooler weather for the rest of the week after a hot July 4th holiday, forecasters said.
Most inland areas will get some relief from the heat, with morning temperatures expected to be several degrees cooler than they were leading into Independence Day, meteorologists with the National Weather Service said.
The cooling trend comes as a ridge of high pressure, high temperature air moves out of the area and a marine layer of cooler air moves in, with clouds persisting along the beaches and valleys of the greater Los Angeles area for longer into the day.
The marine layer is slightly deeper than 24 hours ago. The coastal low clouds have already spread about as far inland as the past two mornings and are now spreading into far western portions of the Inland Empire. #cawx pic.twitter.com/WEaU46Kznk
— NWS San Diego (@NWSSanDiego) July 5, 2023
But the heat will return: By Sunday, the warming trend will pick back up. And next week could be a scorcher, forecasters said.
“High temperatures (next) Tuesday are expected to be around 5 degrees above average for inland areas to near 10 degrees above average for the lower deserts,” meteorologists in the San Diego office of the NWS said Wednesday.
They said high temperatures could reach “near 115 (degrees) in the lower deserts” and vault above “100 (degrees) in the warmest…portions of the Inland Empire.”
The warm-up next week comes after what climate researchers said was already possibly the hottest day ever recorded on Earth.
The globe’s average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool based on satellite data and computer simulations offering climate scientists a glimpse of weather conditions for the entire world.
That mark was the hottest average temperature recorded in at least 44 years since the unofficial record tallying began. Tuesday’s average broke the previous temperature record set just the day before: Monday’s average temperature was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Officials with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the chief weather forecasters for the United States, said the records set Monday and Tuesday are not official tallies, but that they show “us an indication of where we are right now,” said NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick.
She said analyzing the data collected showed that Tuesday was likely on average the hottest day on Earth in “several hundred years.”
NWS officials said locals should take precautions ahead of next week, with temperatures expected to climb into the high 90s or low 100s by Monday.
Tuesday and Wednesday could see temperatures top 100 degrees at least, possibly rising above 110 degrees.
In the meantime, L.A. area residents can expect clear skies with some clouds into the weekend.
“Expect skies to clear a bit slower than they did on (Tuesday), with skies becoming mostly clear by mid to late morning in the valleys, and by noon or shortly thereafter on the coastal plain,” NWS meteorologists in Los Angeles said.
“Clouds will likely linger into the afternoon near the immediate coast, and beach locations may remain mostly cloudy all day.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
