Downtown L.A. Hit 104 and Broke a Record From 1953. Three Other Marks Only Tied.

Four evenings of bulletins from the weather service's L.A./Oxnard office log 14 record marks at seven stations.

Downtown Los Angeles reached 104 degrees on Monday. The old mark for Oct. 5 was 101, set in 1953, and the National Weather Service's Los Angeles/Oxnard office posted the break at 6:24 p.m.

That bulletin lists six more records for the same day. Three of them weren't broken at all.

Monday, as the office logged it

The Los Angeles/Oxnard forecast office covers Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Its Oct. 5 record event report is preliminary, as every one of these is, and it reads:

• Woodland Hills, Pierce College — 106. Breaks 105, from 2025. The newest record on the list: it had stood exactly one year.
• Downtown Los Angeles — 104. Breaks 101, from 1953.
• Long Beach Airport — 104. Ties 104, from 1971.
• Bob Hope Airport, Burbank — 102. Ties 102, from 1943. The oldest mark on the list, and it is still standing.
• Los Angeles International Airport — 101. Ties 101, from 1971.
• Camarillo — 99. Breaks 98, from 2023.
• NWS Oxnard — 98. Breaks 94, from 2023.

Four broken, three tied. The 1943 mark at Burbank and the two 1971 marks, at LAX and Long Beach, were matched to the degree and not passed. A tie leaves the record where it was.

Burbank and Oxnard did it three days running

The office filed a record bulletin on four consecutive evenings. Bob Hope Airport is in three of them; so is its own gauge at Oxnard.

• Friday, Oct. 2 (6:49 p.m.): downtown Los Angeles 103, breaking 101 from 1995; Long Beach 103, breaking 98 from 2014.
• Saturday, Oct. 3 (7:02 p.m.): Burbank 102, breaking 101 from 1943; Oxnard 97, breaking 96 from 2014.
• Sunday, Oct. 4 (6:30 p.m.): Burbank 101, breaking 100 from 1964; Camarillo 99, breaking 98 from 1953; Oxnard 99, breaking 94 from 2023.
• Monday, Oct. 5: the seven above.

Fourteen record marks in four bulletins, at seven stations. Eleven were breaks and three were ties, and 1943 turns up twice at Burbank, on two different calendar dates: its 102 on Saturday beat a 101 set that year, and its 102 on Monday only matched a 102 set that year.

Camarillo makes the same point about how a daily record works. It hit 99 on Sunday and 99 again on Monday, and broke a different record each time — 98 from 1953, then 98 from 2023.

Monday's other record list came after dark

The San Diego forecast office, which covers Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, filed a second list for Monday at 11:59 p.m., and the longer half of it is not about afternoons. Eleven stations set or tied a record for warmest overnight low.

Anaheim never got below 77. The old mark for the date was 73, from 2013. Newport Beach bottomed out at 72 against 68 from 1997. San Diego, Oceanside Harbor and Chula Vista held at 73; Vista, Escondido and Alpine at 72; Riverside at 71. Nine of the eleven were breaks. Santa Ana's 75 and Ramona's 62 were ties.

Seven of those eleven marks had belonged to 1997.

Those are records for heat that does not let up after dark. Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist at the Oxnard office, told the Los Angeles Times that several days of this can "really build and stress the body over time, especially for the elderly and other vulnerable folks like the very young."

The same San Diego bulletin carries eight daytime records: Santa Ana 106, breaking 103 from 1953; Escondido 106, breaking 101 from 2020; Anaheim 104, breaking 99 from 2020; Vista 103, breaking 98 from 1987; Ramona 101, breaking 98 from 2024; Chula Vista 99, breaking 90 from 2020. San Diego's 97 and Oceanside Harbor's 93 tied marks from 1971.

Chula Vista's is the widest margin anywhere on Monday's lists: nine degrees over a record set six years ago.

The streak is the rarer number

Monday was downtown Los Angeles' fourth straight day at 100 or above, CBS Los Angeles reported, and the station said Tuesday was expected to make five. Its chief meteorologist, Paul Deanno, put the last such run more than six decades back: "A gallon of gas cost 30 cents in the summer of 1963. That is the last time we had five straight days above 100 degrees in downtown LA."

Four was already enough to be unusual. Writing Monday, before that fourth day landed, the Los Angeles Times reported Schoenfeld's expectation that it would be "the longest streak of 100 or higher days in October that we've seen for the period of record for that site." The weather service has kept downtown's numbers since the 1800s.

When it breaks

Not before Thursday. The Los Angeles/Oxnard office's forecast discussion, issued at 1:59 p.m. Tuesday, has the heat holding "through at least Thursday with dangerously high temperatures," with some relief near the coast. Then "a significant cooling trend for all areas is expected to begin Friday" — though highs that day will still run 5 to 10 degrees above normal.

After that it turns over fast. The office expects the entire West Coast below normal from Sunday through Tuesday, as a cold low drops south out of Canada, with a small chance of showers from what is left of Hurricane Rachel. CBS Los Angeles' forecast has temperatures falling as much as 25 degrees by the weekend.

Until then

Los Angeles County posts its cooling centers on an interactive map and a printable list. The county says each one has working air conditioning, bathrooms, drinking water and ADA access during its posted hours, and that during extreme heat some switch to extended hours and show on the map with a gray icon instead of a green one. Calling 211 finds the nearest one, free, at any hour.

The record bulletins go out in the evening, once the day's highs are in. Tuesday's isn't out yet.

Sources: National Weather Service Los Angeles/Oxnard record event reports for Oct. 2, Oct. 3, Oct. 4 and Oct. 5, 2026, and its area forecast discussion issued 1:59 p.m. Oct. 6, 2026, as archived by the Iowa Environmental Mesonet; National Weather Service San Diego record event report for Oct. 5, 2026; Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management; the Los Angeles Times; CBS Los Angeles. All record values are preliminary, as the bulletins state. Counts here are of the record lines those bulletins publish. Retrieved Oct. 6, 2026.