Summer in October? Bay Area’s weekend warmup continues Saturday before rainy cooldown

Record high temperatures again appear possible on Saturday

Hot weather is expected to continue to bake the Bay Area on Saturday, ensuring at least one more day of unseasonably warm weather before a rush of cool, moist air brings some relief.

The blush of balmy weather that set records in some cities across the Bay Area this week is expected to continue on Saturday, with high temperatures rising 15 to 20 degrees above normal for this time of year. Despite the threat of more record-breaking temperatures, meteorologists believe rain will soon provide relief to much of Northern California.

“The one thing we keep promising is that change is on the way,” said Dalton Behringer, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “It’s just another day or so we have to get through, and then next week’s going to be pretty pleasant.”

According to the National Weather Service, San Jose tied a record high of 95 degrees set in 1930 and again in 1987 on Friday afternoon. San Francisco’s 1976 high temperature of 92 degrees appeared to be in jeopardy as well. Oakland, San Rafael, Salinas, and Redwood City were also expected to experience near-record high temperatures.

The National Weather Service has extended a heat advisory for most communities surrounding the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions until 11 p.m. Saturday. Temperatures in San Jose, Oakland, and Redwood City may approach or tie Oct. 7 highs, breaking records that have stood for nearly three decades.

The hot weather prompted a surge in calls to air conditioner repairmen as homeowners turned on machines that hadn’t been used for the majority of the summer, and ice cream stands saw a surge in business toward the end of the week.

“Of course, when it’s hot outside, the phones heat up,” said John Gardner, owner of DG Heating & Air Conditioning in San Jose. People frequently realized they needed new filters after going without air conditioners for the majority of the summer, he said.

Beth Mannix, 58, sat in the shade outside Tara’s Organic Ice Cream in Berkeley, trying to beat the heat with a scoop of lavender ice cream, marveling at how “refreshing” it felt to be out of the hot sun.

“We’re lucky,” Cathy Schickler, 73, who was sitting nearby with a scoop of chocolate ice cream, added. “It’s boiling everywhere else.”

According to the Associated Press, temperatures around the world have soared this year as high ocean temperatures helped fuel atmospheric conditions that have put Earth on track for its hottest year on record, roughly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than pre-industrial times. This includes a scorching September that broke 83-year-old heat records kept by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

For the majority of the continent, this meant an oppressively hot summer characterized by heat waves and, in Canada, a disastrous fire season that engulfed large swaths of the United States in smoke for days on end.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area appeared to have avoided the worst of these conditions over the last few months.

San Jose, for example, averaged 69.6 degrees from June to September, which is similar to the South Bay city’s average of 69.2 degrees over the last three decades, according to Behringer. Because several recent years have been unusually hot, it may have felt cooler than usual; those same four months averaged 71.1 degrees in 2022 and 71.4 degrees in 2020.

Similarly, from June to September this year, San Jose had only 11 days with temperatures of 90 degrees or higher, compared to 17 days in 2022 and 21 days in 2020.

Mike Malone, 72, and his wife Barbara, 73, stood outside Tara’s ice cream parlor on Friday afternoon for the second day in a row, having ferried another grandchild to the sunny oasis in search of sugar and a chance to cool off. The recent warm weather didn’t seem to bother them — the couple was visiting from Memphis, which had been baking this summer with the added element of high relative humidity.

“When you stand in the shade here, it’s actually cool,” Mike Malone said as he ate two scoops of salted caramel and sweet cream. He couldn’t help but make a joke about how ironic their visit this year was.

“We come out here to get away from the heat,” he told me.

Temperatures should drop by about ten degrees by Sunday as cool air moves in from the north. Another 10-degree drop is expected on Monday, when rain may start to fall over the North Bay. Showers are expected to reach the rest of the Bay Area by Monday afternoon, bringing a tenth of an inch of rain to much of the region.