Hot Time Ahead for Weekend

A heat wave steamrollered through the county Thursday, sparking a power outage in Fullerton and driving inland dwellers to the beaches in droves, with more of the same predicted for the weekend.

Although no records were broken, temperatures soared to 97 in Anaheim and reached a not-much-cooler 89 in Lake Forest. The farther from the ocean, the hotter.

“It’s what you expect in the summer,” said Curtis Brach of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “It’s just especially strong.”

Brach said Orange County residents could expect to see temperatures in the 70s at the beaches and in the mid-to-lower 90s in the inland areas through Sunday. Riverside residents will fare much worse, he said, with temperatures reaching more than 100.

Many sought relief Thursday at Huntington Beach, where the temperature rested at 70 degrees and a cool breeze washed over sunbathers.

“This is definitely the place to cool off,” said Anastasia Belaya, 20, of Irvine as she stepped into the water.

In Huntington Beach, about 65,000 people fled to the shoreline, lifeguards estimated. In Newport Beach, crowds reached about 55,000.

Things were not so good in Fullerton, where the weather may have sparked a fire in an electrical transformer, causing a power outage that left 8,000 customers, including City Hall, in the dark for almost five hours, company officials said.

About 3:30 p.m., an outdoor transformer at a Southern California Edison Co. substation in the 200 block of Walnut Way caught fire, leaving a three-square-mile area without electricity, company spokesman Criss Brown said.

The cause may have been the hot weather, but officials won’t know for sure until an investigation is completed, Brown said.

The reason for the heat is a very strong ridge of high pressure in the upper atmosphere that extends from California into the Plains. It is pushing air downward and warming it up in the process, Brach said.

Unlike the heat wave in Chicago, where 450 people died in mid-July from heat-related causes, Orange County’s scorcher is a dry one.

“There isn’t a great risk of heat injuries, because the humidity is different,” said Dr. Mark Langdorf, the director of the emergency department at UCI Medical Center in Orange. With great humidity, the body’s natural cooling system is disturbed.

Still, Langdorf suggested some common-sense precautions.

“Stay out of the sun, drink plenty of liquids and stay in the shade if you have to go outside,” Langdorf said. If you don’t have air conditioning, Langdorf suggests getting a fan because any breeze, no matter how warm or cold, will help the body cool. He also suggested extra caution for anyone taking medication that as a side-effect may impede sweat, such as some anti-depressants.

You should seek medical attention if you stop sweating when you are hot or if you are hot to the touch and are not thinking clearly. Confusion is one of the first signs of heat injury, Langdorf said.

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Hot Spots The hottest July 27 on record, 100 degrees, was measured in Santa Ana in 1972. A look at some hot spots around Orange County on Thursday. Anaheim: 97 degrees Dana Point: 75 degrees Laguna Beach: 80 degrees Lake Forest: 89 degrees Newport Beach: 71 degrees San Juan Capistrano: 82 degrees Santa Ana: 91 degrees Source: WeatherData Inc.; Researched by CAROLINE LEMKE / Los Angeles Times