The thong swimsuits were small, but the hearts were big in Dolores Park in San Francisco on Tuesday.
From its grassy slopes, the park has views of palm trees, tennis courts and the city skyline. Sunbathers spent an unusually warm March Tuesday there, enjoying the heat and trying not to think too much about whether climate change might be causing it.
“It’s like, the world’s on fire, let’s get out my Speedo,” said Gordon Nipper, 25, who donned silver nail polish and, yes, a pink Speedo.
The calendar might say it’s still winter, but Californians would not know it. Temperatures throughout the state have reached levels more commonly found in July and August, and heat advisories and extreme heat warnings are in effect from Napa to San Diego. High temperatures are expected to last through Friday in Northern California and through the weekend in the southern half of the state.
The duration of the heat wave is particularly notable. Downtown Los Angeles hit 90 degrees on Monday, 98 on Tuesday and was forecast to stay in the 90s through at least Saturday.
“Getting that hot for five or six days in a row in March is outrageous,” said Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, Calif., west of Los Angeles. Downtown Los Angeles typically doesn’t record its first 90-degree day of the year until early May.
San Francisco was projected to top 80 degrees for much of the week and hit 85 on Tuesday. While that might be considered balmy in many parts of the country, it’s unusual in San Francisco, which is on a peninsula surrounded by the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. The city is known for its misty fog and the perennial need for a jacket, not for sweat in March.
“I know this is bad. It’s awful for the world,” said Nereyda Valdez, 30, as she sat in Dolores Park in a white bikini. “But it’s beautiful.”
Ms. Valdez works remotely. Her apartment, like many in San Francisco, does not have air conditioning and gets stiflingly hot on warm days. So she took Tuesday off to head to the park.
She chatted with Felix Orozco, 29, who was in a blue thong swimsuit. He said he was enjoying the warm day before heading to his job as a restaurant manager, where he knew the kitchen would be scorching. He said he tries to provide ice pops and fans for the staff on hot days.
Down the hill, at the playground, Michael Klinker, 29, pushed his son, Zuma, in the swing for the boy’s third birthday. The metal slide was scorching hot, but the motion of the swing provided a bit of a breeze. Mr. Klinker is a San Francisco native and said he prefers his temperatures in the 50s, not the 80s.
“It’s very, very hot,” Zuma agreed, shaking his head. He said he wanted ice cream.
Which flavor? “Can I say all of them?” he pondered.
Down south, in Los Angeles County, the sun was beating down on the workers in Altadena who were rebuilding homes that had burned in the Eaton fire last year. Some workers, like a crew installing drywall inside the mostly completed shell of a home, had the benefit of shade. Others, like the crew installing a garden wall around an empty property and the framers scaling the roof of another home, did not.
Miguel Torres, a job supervisor, rolled up in his gray pickup truck. He wore shorts and boots in the 90-degree weather and was carrying two plastic bags bulging with bottles of electrolyte drinks.
“Here we have something to combat the heat,” Mr. Torres, 48, said in Spanish.
Roxane Estrada, 50, owns a market and is delivering cold food and drinks from the back of her car to job sites in Altadena as the community rebuilds. Since the heat began, she said, a cucumber-lime drink, shrimp cocktails and ceviche have been fast sellers.
Closer to the ocean, in Los Angeles’s Venice neighborhood, Robert Lance, 59, popped into Gold’s Gym — which became famous as a hangout for Arnold Schwarzenegger — for a lunchtime workout.
“You have to wear at least clothing that breathes,” Mr. Lance said, as weights clanged in the background, “so you don’t die in your own sweat.”
Public pools in Los Angeles have been crowded this week. There aren’t as many outdoor pools in San Francisco, but there are some beaches. At Baker Beach, just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, the parking lots were jammed with cars, many of them parked illegally, and driverless Waymos were trying to drop people off amid the chaos.
The beach itself looked more like Los Angeles in July than San Francisco in March — the sand packed with sunbathers, umbrellas and frolicking dogs and kids.
Katie Saleh, 39, said her husband was playing hooky from work and might do so again later in the week. She remembered moving to San Francisco from Southern California in March 2005 and being distressed by endless rain and a wind that kept turning her umbrella inside out.
“I have never seen a beach day like this in San Francisco,” she said.
Christopher Lopez, 20, agreed, having just spent a few hours tossing a football with his friends.
“We’re trying Brock Purdy passes, you know?” he said, referring to the San Francisco 49ers quarterback.
And then, with a wink, he declared, “It’s the perfect day to be sick.”
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
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