The Bay Area's siege of hot weather -- the National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for the region through Monday evening -- raises the possibility that some locations are about to experience their hottest day, or days, on record.
If you live somewhere close to the ocean or the bay, a temperature of 110 might as well be infinity -- so hot it's just hard to imagine. In the region's interior valleys, triple-digit readings are not at all uncommon. But even for those air-conditioned climes, the heat forecast for Friday and Saturday is a little scary.
The forecast highs for Livermore -- at the town's airport on the west side of town -- are 116 Friday and 117 on Saturday. The outlook for Walnut Creek is the same. The all-time record for both cities is 115 -- a mark Livermore hit on Sept. 3, 1950, and Walnut Creek reached on July 14, 1972.
The highest temperature ever recorded in the Bay Area? Well, there are enough different sources of data to consult that one treads this territory carefully, but the apparent answer is: 117, in Antioch, on June 17, 1961. If you're particular, that was the reading at Antioch Pump Plant 3 -- which is technically just across the city limit in the town of Oakley.