Playing It Cool : Summer Months Have Been a Lot Hotter Than People in Southland Realize, Forecasters Insist

The merchandise isn’t all that’s brief this summer at Akbar Afredi’s bikini stand. Summer itself has been on the skimpy side.

“The weather has been cool and nobody’s been buying,” said Afredi, who in summers past has sold as much as $800 worth of bikinis on a single hot day. This summer, he has gone home at night more than once after selling only one or two swimsuits at his Venice Beach store.

“Cool weather is fine for the wintertime, but not the summer,” he said last week as he marked down his stock, hoping to clean out his 320-suit inventory over the Labor Day weekend--the traditional end of the summer season.

But despite the goose bumps that this summer has given Afredi and other sun lovers, the past three months have been hotter than usual.

“It’s actually been two-tenths of a degree above normal for June, July and August,” said meteorologist Rick Dittmann of Weather Data Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “We tend to remember the most recent weather, so if it’s been persistently cool for a few weeks, we say, ‘Gosh, it’s been a cool summer.’ ”

Average High Was 71.7 Degrees

Cloudy morning weather during much of August kept the area from warming as it usually does each afternoon, Dittmann said. The average high temperature each day in Santa Ana was 71.7, contrasted with a normal maximum reading of 73.3, according to Weather Data.

The “normal” temperature is calculated on the basis of 30 years of readings collected between 1951 and 1980, Dittmann said.

Recent morning cloudiness has been caused by a low-pressure trough that extends from Alaska to Southern California. The low-pressure area, about 700 miles west of California and about 20,000 feet up, forms a thick cloud bank--known as the “marine layer”--at sea level that is pushed inland during nighttime and morning hours, he said.

“That gives the sun less time to heat everything up during the day,” he said.

Phil La Casto, owner of Aqua Pool Center in Orange, hasn’t missed the typical summer extremes.

“It’s easier to take care of pools when people aren’t swimming as heavily,” said La Casto, whose pool service maintains about 300 home pools. “When it’s 100 degrees, then there are algae and chemical problems. And people swim a lot more.”

Although business typically levels off after Labor Day, La Casto predicted a final September steamer.

“I’ll be surprised if we don’t see at least one more heat wave,” he said. “I don’t need it, so I’m not counting on it. We take care of the pools either way.”

Even though the temperature drop has been slight, lifeguard Dan Dorsey said he has noticed a decrease in the size of crowds at Seal Beach.

Normally, he said, about 8,800 people on a weekday pack the parking lots. But not lately.

“Some days it is very crowded. And on other days, it isn’t at all. But it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the weather,” Dorsey said.

Next month, forecasters say, should be better.

“We expect 19 sunny days in September,” said Betty Reo, a weather specialist at the National Weather Service. “Sunshine should prevail, with less coastal cloudiness than in the summer.”