Heat wave reaches third day, but should end soon

CLOVERDALE — How hot was it in Sonoma County on Friday?

It was so hot, Sherry Kane’s emu voluntarily stepped into its wading pool. “I saw her going in without coaxing,” Kane said. “Usually I have to work on her a little.”

Kane lives in Forestville, but Friday she packed up and left town — and went somewhere even more scorching. She was joining a couple friends at Cloverdale Memorial Pool, where around 30 people, mostly families, were dunking themselves or huddling under umbrellas in the hottest part of an afternoon that would reach 112 degrees, according to AccuWeather.

For the third consecutive day, most of Sonoma County and its neighboring counties — and pretty much anywhere else at modest elevation in the southwest United States — was bathed in intense heat. It reached 109 in Ukiah and 107 in Clearlake and Calistoga, 106 in Hopland, 105 in Geyserville, 104 in Healdsburg and 103 in Windsor.

Santa Rosa’s high of 98 degrees recorded by AccuWeather on Friday fell far short of Thursday’s record-setting 104, but the cumulative effect on residents was sapping. Petaluma topped out at 94 degrees.

At least our misery has company. Much of the western United States has been trapped by a dayslong heat wave, with more than 46 million residents of Western states having fallen under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. The prolonged drought now affecting vast swaths of the West is the region’s worst in at least 20 years, according to U.S. Drought Monitor, a collaboration of several federal agencies and academic groups.

Still, for the first time in 72 hours, the light at the end of the tunnel didn’t look like a heat lamp. AccuWeather’s forecast calls for the highs in Santa Rosa to stair-step down to 92 degrees on Saturday, 85 on Sunday and an idyllic 76 on Monday.

Friday was Day 2 of a Flex Alert called by the California Independent System Operator, which manages the flow of electricity in the state’s high-voltage power lines. The alert was in effect from 6-9 p.m., with grid operators again asking the public to conserve electricity to help balance supply and demand and avoid service disruptions.

As of late Friday, PG&E had not ordered any planned outages to address fire safety, known as public safety power shut-offs. Nor were there any major unplanned power failures like the one that affected more than 3,200 homes and businesses in parts of Santa Rosa, Glen Ellen and Kenwood on Thursday night, though a smaller emergency outage hit 89 customers in a neighborhood between Glen Ellen and Jack London State Historic Park around 4:30 p.m. Thursday.

With temperatures easing off a bit and cooler weather ahead, Sonoma County and the City of Santa Rosa again refrained from opening any government-managed cooling centers.

There weren’t any in Cloverdale, either, and that’s an issue, said Zeke Guzman, head of La Familia Sana, a grassroots organization that aids farmworkers and other Latino residents in North County.

“We have to talk to city and county officials,” Guzman said Friday. “This is a problem.”

The Cloverdale Senior Multipurpose Center has opened its doors to the heat-weary in the past but did not do so during this stretch of weather. That left the Cloverdale Regional Library and small lobbies at the town’s city hall and police station as the only artificially cooled public spaces.

Guzman and his colleague Myra Arreguin took matters into their own hands, working with property manager Lupe Luna to convert the dining room of the Cloverdale Family Apartments building into a makeshift cooling center over the past three days. As Guzman has worked to get the word out, a core group of 10-12 men and women have taken advantage of the opportunity, sitting on folding chairs and chatting as the afternoon sun raged outside.

El Milagro restaurant was supposed to bring by dinner a little later, with Corazon Healdsburg offering to foot the bill.

“Now we have to figure out what to do for the rest of the month,” Guzman said. “It’s supposed to be between 93 and 100 through most of July here.”

Guzman described the plight of some of the workers and retirees he has made contact with, including a woman who lives in a tattered garage and a man who has been sleeping in a Tuff Shed.

“Today I turn on a little fan like this,” said Maria Elena Ortiz, a 71-year-old retiree who lives in a budget mobile home park off Railroad Avenue in Cloverdale, making the shape of a roughly 3-by-3-foot box with her hands. “I try to open a door or window (at night).”

“Resourcefulness” was the word of the day in Sonoma County.

Lifeguards at the Cloverdale pool were putting their cellphones in the refrigerator to keep them from overheating and shutting down. Suzanne Bach, who was at the pool with her two young daughters and three not-quite-as-young family friends, said her family had barely ventured outside over the three-day bake.

“My living room looks like a kids’ playroom,” Bach said. “It’s literally a kids’ playroom.”

And of course air conditioning units were flying off the shelves this week. Kane, the emu caretaker, bought hers a few days ago after seeing the forecast.

“My ceiling fans have always been adequate for all the years I’ve lived in Forestville,” she said. “I felt I could tolerate a few weeks out of the year. But this is different.”

Most agreed that the heat waves are getting longer and hotter in Sonoma County, eating at quality of life in a region that has long been renowned for it. Kane was certain of it, and so was Ortiz, who nodded vigorously when asked if the summers are getting more extreme in the north county.

Asked whether her age is also making things harder for her, Ortiz thought for a second and answered no. Because she’s strong? “Yeah,” she said.

“But what can I say?” Ortiz added in Spanish.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.