07/06/2010
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Beaches cloaked in fog. Skyscrapers vanishing into low clouds. Streets damp with drizzle.
As the East Coast swelters in blistering heat, temperatures in much of Southern California are almost downright chilly.
On Monday, downtown Los Angeles had a high of just 75, eight degrees below normal. Seaside Los Angeles International Airport was 12 degrees below normal with a high of 67, and San Diego's maximum of 65 was 10 degrees under normal for the date.
In comparison, temperatures inched into at least the 90s from Maine to Texas after the Fourth of July weekend, and the National Weather Service issued heat advisories for much of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, including an excessive heat warning for the Philadelphia area, which hit 100 degrees Tuesday afternoon.
The seasonal influx of moist ocean air known as "June Gloom" in Southern California has been thick and unyielding even as July approached, keeping the sky a dismal gray through much of each day before sometimes retreating to the beaches or offshore in the afternoons.
"Nobody wants to go to the beach when it's windy and the sand is blowing," said Mary Moran of Chaos Enterprises in Hermosa Beach, operator of Perry's Cafe and Rentals in Santa Monica, along with Beach Butler Service and Legends Beach Bike Tours.
Beach Butler had 10 cancellations Monday. That's $1,000 in bookings, Moran said.
Instead of a day in the sun with an ocean view, "everybody wants to huddle up," she said.
The number of beach visitors was down significantly over the Fourth of July weekend but there were good crowds, said Garth Canning, section chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department's Lifeguard Division.
As soon as the sun comes out, "folks will be back in a heartbeat," he said.
He believes the gloom won't last all summer — unlike a season in the 1990s that was dubbed "the summer that never was." During that season, he said he counted "five days of partial sun through the summer months. It was solid overcast all summer long."
The year has been strange from the start, said Moran, the beach services provider.
"We normally make our money in the summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and things get slim in November and December, outside of the holidays. This year, because we experienced such a great December and January, we did better than we have in 35 years," Moran said. "Now we are getting December's weather."
Moran, who lives in Marina del Rey, said the July Fourth weekend was "awful, completely socked in. And there were extremely large waves and rip tides."
"The rest of the country is suffering with 100-degree temperatures," she added. "We would just like to see the sun."
The normal seasonal pattern is for night and morning clouds to roll in from the ocean and move off in the afternoon, said Tina Stall, a weather service meteorologist in San Diego.
But for the past week or so, a lingering low-pressure system has allowed the marine layer of overcast to deepen and created breezes that have pushed it inland, Stall said.
There also may be some impact from a high-pressure system that has kept the East Coast sweltering because "whatever's over us can't move east," she said.
The low pressure should weaken in a few days, so the region can warm up, Stall said.
"Toward the end of the week, you could probably break out the shorts," she said.
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