Heat Wave

Crews battled a brush fire Tuesday that scorched parched hillsides and threatened homes in Kern County as inland areas of Southern California sizzled through triple-digit temperatures. The blaze had burned 1,100 acres by Tuesday night as aircraft made repeated assaults on flames that raced across ridge tops and into steep canyons near the communities of Lebec and Frazier Park, officials said. As heat baked the region for the second consecutive day, people sought relief at beaches, where large waves and strong rip currents kept lifeguards busy making rescues.

A heat wave gripping Southern California will produce near-record triple-digit temperatures in inland areas Tuesday and Wednesday, while large waves and dangerous rip currents are expected at beaches from Ventura to San Diego, forecasters said. The National Weather Service issued a high surf advisory for beaches in Ventura and Los Angeles counties from Tuesday evening through Wednesday evening. Large waves and dangerous rip currents were also expected in San Diego County. On Tuesday and Wednesday, temperatures could hit 110 degrees in Antelope Valley, 107 in lower mountain areas from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles counties and 90 to 98 in other inland areas, the weather service said.

Summer, which seemingly fled Los Angeles this year, will make a brief cameo this week. Forecasters say a high-pressure system moving in from Arizona and New Mexico will boost temperatures to between 90 and 104 degrees in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, making for a heat wave that is to begin on Sunday and peak on Monday. One of the Southland's perennial hot spots, Woodland Hills, could reach the triple digits, and Pasadena may hit the mid-90s early this week. "The summer heat has finally arrived," said Bonnie Bartling, a weather specialist at the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.

Last summer things were so hot that "the bottoms of our shoes melted," said Lucio Rivera. But not this year. "This summer's been perfect," the paving company worker said this week as he applied striping to a freshly resurfaced roadway at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. It was a comfortable 77 degrees, according to the college's official weather station, which was about 100 feet from where Rivera, 40, of West Covina was working with two colleagues. It was so cool, in fact, that they had to use a propane torch to heat up and loosen the thermoplastic pavement paint before spreading it from a special three-wheel cart.

Tatiana Dyment found her 70-year-old mother sitting in the bathtub, her head leaning sideways and cold water from the showerhead still streaming down her back. "She could have been dead for two to three days, doctors suppose," said the psychologist, who had rushed back to Moscow from vacation in Croatia after she couldn't reach her mother by phone. "The windows in her apartment on the sixth floor were wide open and every piece of furniture in the apartment smelled of burning" from the thick white smoke hanging in the air outside.

As peat fires raged on the outskirts of town, shrouding Moscow in a thick cloud of smog, residents Wednesday sought to cope with a record-breaking heat wave that is expected to intensify further. Public health officials urged workers in non-essential jobs to stay home and people not to drive their cars as weather forecasters predicted temperatures exceeding 102 degrees Thursday, in a city more used to icy spells than such heat. With more than 1,480 fires in two weeks, the smog level had soared to as high as 10 times the safe level in parts of Moscow.

Balancing a giant jug of icy watermelon juice over one shoulder, Rafael Soria trod though the Santa Monica beach sand like a man on a mission. Out on the shore, his thirsty wife and three children awaited. "We came all the way from Palmdale as soon as we could," said the 36-year-old in shorts and a tank top. "It's just way too hot today." Across Southern California, people flocked to the coastline to seek relief from the summer's first heat wave. Crowds hauling boogie boards, fishing poles, kites, hula-hoops and coolers stuffed with hot dogs and chips drove toward the sea breeze Saturday as the fourth straight day of high temperatures persisted, particularly in the valley and inland areas.

Thunderstorms on Thursday afternoon rumbled across Southern California, sparking brush fires and causing flash flooding and hail even as inland areas sweltered amid triple-digit temperatures and high humidity. In Los Angeles County, a powerful afternoon thunderstorm struck the Antelope Valley as fire crews responded to dozens of incidents, including small brush fires and a rescue of two people trapped in mud after a heavy downpour, officials said. In Riverside County, where more than a dozen brush fires erupted, three sheriff's deputies suffered minor injures rescuing a woman from a trailer as flames burned near homes in Lake Elsinore, officials said.

The heat wave that gripped Southern California on Wednesday is expected to last through the weekend, increasing the threat of wildfires and prompting officials to issue heat advisories for inland areas. The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat watch from Thursday morning through Friday evening for valley areas in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and Riverside counties. Temperatures there were expected to exceed 100 degrees. The soaring temperatures, expected to range from five to 10 degrees above normal, are the result of a high-pressure ridge building over the Southwest, the weather service said.

How hot was it Tuesday on the East Coast? "I feel like I'm taking an endless hot yoga class, fully clothed," said Marcy Leash, 28, emerging from the subway in Manhattan's Union Square. "It's like driving into a hair dryer," Alex Goren, 70, wrote in a text message as he tooled around Long Island's swanky East End with the top down on his red convertible. "It feels like I'm standing behind a muffler out here," said Megan Heltzel, 23, on a street corner in Washington.