August 6, 2006 – California Heat Wave

August 6, 2006 – California Heat Wave

Beginning July 15th through July 26th Northern California felt the grip of the heat wave that had been afflicting a good part of the rest of the country. My wife IM and I escaped the heat on Sunday July 16th and Monday July 17th by driving south on California 101 to Cambria and spending the night at the Sand Pebble Inn on Moonstone Beach Drive. Temperatures along the route south of Salinas were in the 90s reaching into the 100s by the time we left King City behind and headed toward Bradley and Paso Robles further south. The elevated temperatures were causing the miles of vineyards we passed south of King City on either side of Highway 101 to stop growing—reducing the level of sugar in the harvest for this year’s crop. As we descended the Coast Range on California Highway 46 leading from Paso Robles and dead ending into scenic California Highway 1, the outside temperature on the car thermometer was still registering in the low 80’s Fahrenheit. By the time we turned right on Highway 1 heading north toward Cambria the temperature had begun to fall steadily and was in the low 70s when we pulled into the parking lot of the Sand Pebble Inn. A on-shore breeze was bringing cooling relief to the coast but not penetrating inland more than a mile or two. The gigantic high pressure system dominating the west and the Coast Range held the breeze at bay. We luxuriated in the cool ocean breeze after being cooped up in an air conditioned car for the past 170 miles.

When we returned to San Jose on Monday afternoon July 17th, the heat was still on and the temperature inside the house read low-80, still cooler than the mid-90s outside. By evening the temperature outside began to drop as the sun went down, but inside, it had climbed to 90 degrees. At dusk, we opened all the windows in the house and I brought out two large stainless steel 18-in., high-velocity Hampton Bay floor fans. I put one outside each of the two sliding glass doors in our back yard and turned them up full blast to blow the accumulated heat out of the house and bring in cooler air from outside. Normally, the sun going down in Northern California is accompanied by an on-shore wind that can cool our house from 85 to 70 in an hour or two depending on the force of the wind. Monday evening, the wind was becalmed and what little cooling there was had to be moved into the house by the two large fans. We have another slightly larger black no-name brand floor fan that produces less air flow than the other two but moves air better than our five 12-in. pedestal Hampton Bay fans. The black fan was doing duty upstairs blowing hot air out of the bedrooms aided by the four smaller pedestal units. The fifth 12-in. pedestal unit was downstairs in front of the rear window staining to purge hot air stuck in the northeast corner of the house.

Our place sits on a cul de sac facing southeast with our backyard oriented northwest getting the lingering summer sun hitting the back of the house with full force most of the afternoon until nearly 8:00 PM when the neighbors’ vegetation starts to block the direct rays. On a normal evening, the onshore wind would begin blowing from the northwest and sometime later at night turning around and blowing southwest. The only explanation for this change I can fathom is we’re located south and east of the bottom of the bay. When the fog streams through the Golden Gate, it moves unimpeded south the length of the bay and has a direct shot down California Highway 101 to our place. Later at night when the fog makes it over the Coast Range (Santa Cruz Mountains) along California Highway 17, the breeze blows through our place in the opposite direction. But the evening of Monday July 17th the on shore flow had been stop well off shore by the stubborn high pressure system. Television weather forecasters tell us the pressure compresses the air increasing the heating effect of the sun, thus the elevated temperature. However, we should be thankful that the off-shore flow normally associated with the high pressure systems that afflict us in the summer is nearly absent with this heat wave. Otherwise, we would not only be sweltering but we would be punished further by an angry hot wind.

But this high pressure system is not without its own form of dread: subtropical moisture coming up from the Baja Peninsula afflicting the desert Southwest before moving north through the California Central Valley and out over Northern California where it produced sporadic thunderstorms in the higher elevations and muggy conditions everywhere else. The humidity reminds me of my few days in Shanghai a few weeks ago, though not quite as bad. Here my sweat does dry up. There I walked about outside in moist clothes. During the news hour we view the satellite photo of the California coast. The summer fog bank that usually hugs the coast is seen miles offshore, exiled from the land it visits without restriction otherwise. In the mid 70s the California coast is a delight for those beachgoers splashing playfully in the surf who would otherwise be shivering. IM and I are not much for the beach. Even when we were in Cambria we were more comfortable watching the waves lapping the shore from our perch in a second story room at the Sand Pebble than down on the beach.

By 10:00 PM on Monday, the noisy 18-in fans—imagine being near a prop plane with engines revving—have managed to drop the temperature to 85 degrees. By midnight, the temperature cooled a couple more degrees and we close the house up and turn in for the night, leaving the windows upstairs wide open and the fans all going full blast—sleeping amid the whine of fans though the smaller fans are less noisy than the bigger ones downstairs. When I awake at 5:30 in the morning for my run, the temperature is close to 70 degrees outside and the upstairs has cooled down to the upper 70s. The temperature downstairs is still over 80. When I return an hour later, I open all the windows downstairs and crank up the fans to their highest speed. By the time I leave for work an hour later, the house has been cooled to the mid 70s. I close everything up and draw the blinds on the front of the house to keep the radiant heat out. During my 20-minute commute, the car thermometer shows the outside temperature starting to rise. I’m off to my air conditioned office and poor IM is left to ride the thermometer up to the mid-80s inside the house.

We survived the heat wave as we have for the past 32 years and there were stretches in the past equally severe and as long, but as you get older, the stretches seem more ominous and foreboding. Perhaps the constant talk of global warming is contributing to our sense of anxiety. In any event, we decide to replace out 26-year old gas furnace with a new heating and air conditioning unit. The day it’s installed, of course, the heat wave has passed and we’re back to a normal pattern of upper 80s, low 90s during the day and low 60s at night with a cooling on-shore breeze. Why is it when you fix a leaky roof it stops raining?