The relentless intensity of a Bay Area heat wave barely let up on Thursday, and already it was to blame for at least one death in the region.
What might be coming in the days ahead is just as sobering. As Mother Nature spent the Fourth of July pummeling the Bay Area like a helpless fighter in the corner, National Weather Service forecasters said the bell may not be coming for at least two weeks.
“And two weeks really is as far as we can look out and have a decent idea,” NWS meteorologist Nicole Sarment said Thursday afternoon. “We’re not saying it’s going to be over in two weeks. We’re saying that’s the soonest it might be over.”
A homeless person in San Jose died Wednesday from effects of the weather, the first known casualty from the blast of heat. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan announced the death on social media.
“A homeless neighbor lost their life on our streets due to the heat,” Mahan said on X (formerly Twitter), adding that it was “avoidable tragedy.”
The heat was slightly cooler on Thursday, not that it really could be felt. As Sarment said, “If it’s 110 degrees, or 106 — at that point it hardly matters.”
At 4 p.m. the weather service said the recorded high was 104 degrees in Brentwood in far east Contra Costa County, the hottest spot in the Bay Area. In Alameda County, the gauge rose to 103 in Livermore.
Morgan Hill paced the South Bay at 103 degrees. Concord had a recorded high of 102, San Jose 93, Oakland 84. At the San Francisco International Airport, it was 88 degrees, and in downtown San Francisco, the temperature read 78.
The National Weather Service said Thursday’s San Francisco Airport temperature snapped a record high of 85 degrees previously set in 1973, and that San Rafael’s high of 98 degrees tied a record set in 2013.
The ever-widening high-pressure system that brought this heat continues only to get thicker, and there is little behind it to nudge it out of the area, Sarment said. That situation will remain status quo for the time being as the system continues to proceed east at less than a snail’s pace.
Most cooling centers throughout the region were scheduled to be closed Thursday for the Fourth of July holiday before opening again Friday. Temperatures are expected to inch up 3-4 degrees, matching Wednesday’s highs when records fell in Livermore (110 on Wednesday) and San Rafael (100).The weather service extended an excessive heat warning in effect since Tuesday another 24 hours, until July 10 at 11 p.m. A red-flag warning for extreme fire conditions in the East Bay Hills and Santa Cruz Mountains was extended until 9 p.m. Saturday.
The heat caused Oakland to cancel its Fourth of July Family Day, and the city of Antioch to cancel its annual Fourth of July parade.
The triple-digit heat is expected to make for another challenging day for firefighters battling the Thompson Fire in Butte County. It had burned 3,568 acres and was 7% contained early Thursday, according to Cal Fire. Authorities have evacuated 28,000 people.
The brief 3-4 degree cool off will be a one-day only event. On Friday, temperatures are expected to gain the degrees they lost on Thursday. Temperatures as high as 110 degrees in some areas could be in play for Friday, according to the weather service.
