February Heat Alert for LA : FEBRUARY

 Just in time for the Super Bowl. Cincinnati have have some issues on game day.

The weather service has issued a heat alert for highs above 90 in Los Angeles this week. February! 

It is the first time an alert has been issued in February (or Dec, Jan, & Apr)! It means the high in LA will be above 90. Now that might not seem so bad (it's only 32C), but that is downtown. And, if you know that, downtown LA isn't all that bad. It gets worse in the valleys and smoggier towards the beach.

So Super Bowl's SoFi stadium should be horrible for a team from the ice and snow (Cincinnati is playing LA, so that's even worse luck - we practice in the heat and smog all the time).

The article does have a great explanation of why the Santa Ana Winds are hot and lead to such dirty air. Below:

The setup isn’t exactly a classic one for extreme heat in Southern California, but it does meet the requirements for warming offshore flow. Multiple areas of high pressure are banked to the north, one in southern British Columbia and the other over Saskatchewan and Manitoba. That, coupled with weak low pressure draped across the southern United States, will funnel air westward over the Sierra Nevada.

As air slides downhill into the lowlands and the Inland Empire and deserts of Southern California, it will undergo a process called adiabatic compression — greater air pressure near sea level will squeeze and compress the air, which induces a warming and drying. By the time parcels of air make it to Los Angeles between Wednesday and Friday, they’ll be sitting in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees.