A heat wave in the Bay Area and Central Coast will last into the weekend, with an Excessive Heat Warning issued by the National Weather Service for much of the region being extended through 11 p.m. Saturday.
The weather service forecasted inland temperatures as high as 108 degrees in the region Thursday and confirmed as of 2:40 p.m. that normally cooler areas like Big Sur had a reading as high as 104 degrees.
San Jose hit 100 degrees Thursday, making it the first time the city had temperatures of 100 or more for three days in a row in the month of October, according to the weather service.
The months of September and October tend to occasionally have heat waves in the Bay Area, but even accounting for that, this week’s hot weather has been about 15 to 20 degrees above normal for this time of year, according to Rachel Kennedy, a meteorologist with the weather service.
The hottest weather has tended to be in elevated terrain like the East Bay hills, Santa Cruz mountains and interior parts of Monterey County, and those places have “also had the most extreme heat risk because they’re not cooling down very much overnight,” Kennedy said.
Some of the hottest areas of the region will only reach low temperatures in the 70s and 80s overnight Thursday into Friday, and there is only a slight cooldown expected going into the weekend, when high temps will likely be in the mid to upper 90s versus the triple-digit numbers of the past few days, she said.
Cooler weather is expected to finally arrive back in the Bay Area by the middle of next week, according to the weather service.
