San Francisco

National Weather Service Issues Heat Advisory for Parts of Bay Area

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for parts of the Bay Area for Saturday.

A ridge of high pressure combined with offshore winds will lead to temperatures Saturday above what are normally seen in the area, according to the National Weather Service.

The advisory is in effect mainly for urban areas of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as parts of the Santa Clara Valley, coastal locations of the inland Monterey Bay Area and into the northern Salinas Valley.

The advisory will be in effect from late morning until Saturday evening, according to the NWS.

Heat in the 90s was felt in the normally temperate Bay Area.

Throngs of thousands who crammed Golden Gate Park for the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival were chugging water and dumping it on their heads as they danced to banjos and fiddles in the midday swelter, with many wearing shorts and little else.

Heat in the Sacramento also pushed well into the 90s.

Temperatures approached triple digits in much of California on Saturday afternoon and surpassed 100 degrees in inland areas as a steaming autumn in the state seemed more like an endless summer.

The mercury was at 95 degrees in downtown Los Angeles by midday and 101 in the suburbs of San Bernardino County.

Normally closed for the season by now, the Raging Waters theme park in San Dimas, where it was 97 degrees Saturday afternoon, was open to provide relief and recreation for another weekend.

The heat brought a red-flag warning of critical wildfire conditions through Saturday night, the National Weather Service said.

The U.S. Forest Service has implemented 24-hour firefighter staffing. The Los Angeles County Fire Department has beefed up many of its firefighting crews from three to four people and stationed extra equipment in strategic locations.

"We've got wind, heat, the perfect combination, everything in alignment for a potential brushfire,'' fire Capt. Rich Moody said as he and his crew patrolled a Southern California hillside.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is urging people to set thermostats at 78 degrees.

Bay City News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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