In Woodland Hills, It's Just Too Darn Hot

It's hot everywhere. But then there is Woodland Hills.

On Tuesday, the San Fernando Valley suburb marked its 20th straight day with 100-plus temperatures, breaking yet another record.

Three days before, it had the distinction of having the hottest temperature reading \o7ever \f7recorded in Los Angeles County: 119 degrees.

Blame the mountains that ring Woodland Hills' south and west sides for the toaster-oven effect. They keep cool ocean air out and trap the hot urban air in to make the bedroom community of 10,129 homes routinely 15 degrees hotter than downtown Los Angeles.

So residents of Woodland Hills are a tough breed when it comes to extreme weather -- as long as the AC is humming.

"I've always said that they should blow some holes in the mountains and let the breeze come in," said Sande Danielson, looking a little wilted as she sat under a water mister outside a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shop on Ventura Boulevard.

She has lived in Woodland Hills for 25 years, so she knows that air conditioning is second in importance only to a car when you're at the extreme western edge of Los Angeles.

"Turn down the air conditioner like they say to do? That's insane in this weather," Danielson said, sipping from a cup of ice water while she waited, as she put it, "for my coffee to cool down a little."

With ridge tops as high as 2,000 feet, the Santa Monica Mountains shield Woodland Hills -- which sits at about a 900-foot elevation -- from the ocean.

From the top of one of its hilltops, Joan Sims stood in the scorching sun and surveyed an unobstructed view. "We're one of the few people in Los Angeles who can say we can see the sun rise and see it set," she said.

In other words, the six homes on her San Sebastian Drive were going to be baked precisely 14 hours on Tuesday: from 6 a.m. through 8 p.m. For most residents, it was going to seem even longer because the street's power was off for the third straight day.

Sims' house is the exception. When she and her husband built it with their own hands in 1959 to become the street's first residents, they hooked it up to power lines on a street beneath their hill. Newcomers are served by a newer line on the street -- which was shut down by an apparent transformer malfunction.

Down the street, neighbor Gayle Dufour was already plenty steamed.

"I live in an all-electric home," said Dufour, who has lived in Woodland Hills since 1981. "The only way we can keep cool is take a cold shower. The water's still on, at least."