Sacramento region heads into first 90-degree heat of 2026

Ajouté : 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Getting a taste of summer heat in May, plus our fire outlook heading in through the summer. I'm ABC 10 Chief Meteorologist Monica Woods, and we have a heat advisory posted for early next week. This is going to be for the northern and central part of the Sacramento Valley, and then for the northern San Joaquin Valley, starting off in Stanislaus County all the way southward. We're expecting temperatures in the 90s to near 100, and this is really going to start to take a toll on our bodies since we haven't really seen this type of heat yet this year. Heading into the weekend, we have a nice light onshore flow on Saturday. It picks up again during the evening for that Delta breeze. This is what we wait for all summer long, especially as those temperatures get quite toasty during the afternoon, and then the evening Delta breeze kicks in. We can open up our windows, use the whole house fans, and really use nature's air conditioning. By Sunday morning, that breeze is strong enough to pull in some of that marine layer right through the Central Valley, and then it backs off during the day only to pick back up again. So, I'm going to bring down those temperatures slightly for Sunday. Still going to keep our weather impact alert in place, but now I'm going to have that from Saturday through next Tuesday with moderate heat risk. Prepare for shade, hydration over the weekend, and be water safe. We'll talk about those river temperatures, which are running in the 50s and 60s.

[00:01:18]That's enough to take your breath away, lose muscle control, and make it very difficult to navigate what are right now cold, fast, and high natural waterways.

[00:01:28]Our reservoirs are a little bit better option right now since they don't have quite the flow that we're seeing right now in the rivers. If you're headed for a hike in the Sierra or the foothills, be aware those water temperatures are running in the 40s to right around 50° with Lake Tahoe water temperature sitting in the low to mid-50s. Our weekend forecast, again, weather impact alert for both Saturday and Sunday with highs in the upper 80s. Morning lows, though, starting us off in the 50s. Quite comfortable for the morning, but then the afternoons get very toasty with temperatures running 10 to 15° above average during our weather impact alert. The peak heat hitting us on Monday with highs in the low to mid-90s, but again, we're going to extend some of those 90s and near 100° temperatures through Tuesday for parts of the valley that just doesn't get access to that breeze coming in from the Pacific. Again, heat is going to build over the weekend leading to that peak heat uh statewide for Monday.

[00:02:26]Temperatures about 10 to in some places over 20° above average, especially for the southern part of the state. And it's been a while. For Sacramento, the last time that we hit 90° was last October.

[00:02:38]The last 95+ degree day, we have to go all the way back to last September. So, it's been a while since we've had to deal with this type of heat. The warmest that we've been this year hit us in March. It's been over a month since we've seen 85+ degree temperatures. We hit those 88+ degree temperatures 18th, 20th, and 29th in March. And then the warmest that we were in April was on the 5th and the 30th at 85°. So, even then, that's still well above average. It's just that, you know, once we cross that threshold of 90°, we all start feeling it. And that's where we are going to be at on Monday with our heat risk forecast. This is going to affect many people who are sensitive to the heat, especially those of us that don't have access to proper air conditioning. So, shade, hydration, about the best that we can do at this point. Now, that does get to knock down slightly on Tuesday, but again, those are going to be Delta-influenced areas because once we pull in that cooler Pacific air, we'll really feel the impacts during the afternoon, knocking down those temperatures. Timing is everything though. The breeze, if it doesn't kick in until after 5:00, we'll still be approaching 90°. If it kicks in earlier than that, we'll knock it down even more into the 80s. But, the countdown is on. These are big times that we start to head outdoors more and celebrate things like Mother's Day, which is 2 days away. And then, we quickly turn our attention to Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer uh 17 days away. 42 days until June 10th.

[00:04:09]And how long until the summer solstice?

[00:04:11]Well, it actually hits us on the same day as Father's Day this year, 44 days on June 21st. So, we'll be looking ahead to a lot of things that just kind of scream summer. One of which is going to be the lack of rain. Now, we have a really good situation brewing right now because April was really a wet and cooler uh month for us. We had some of the top 10 wettest for Butte, Nevada, and Amador County. So, you can see a lot of that shaded in green, particularly for Northern California. Southern California didn't quite benefit from those storms coming in, but April was a total soaker for us and it really delayed the onset of our peak wildfire season. Statewide precipitation actually got a big boost in April. We were heading into the end of March with nearly the driest on record for March and what could have been the beginning of the drying season.

[00:05:02]But, March came in, really delivered quite a punch, especially for Northern California, and it brought up some of these averages here for our water year, which began last October and it will run all the way through this September 30th.

[00:05:15]Sacramento also did quite well in April and followed up with March. We are over a quarter of an inch ahead of what we normally get. One rainstorm brought nearly a month's worth of rain for Sacramento. And again, helped us with our water year as well, closing in on nearly about average, half an inch behind. So, we'll call it nearly average at this point. And we may not be done with the rain yet in in uh May.

[00:05:42]Our drought monitor, we saw some good improvements, especially for Southern California, where some areas are over 6 inches ahead of what we normally see in the water year. So that eroded nicely.

[00:05:52]We are starting to see some dryness peek in here, especially throughout the Sierra spine. And then on the northeast part of the state, moderate drought still persisting there. And the outlook is starting to shift into a drier situation as well. We'll take a look at the reasons why. First of all, we're past the bulk of our rainy season. That hits us December, January, and February.

[00:06:15]Didn't play out that way this year. We really picked up some steam in April and again, we saw some decent rain in May.

[00:06:21]So we had a couple of different months in there that were big players, got a big boost in the beginning of the season, and then things kind of dried out for us. December, January, February wasn't all that bad, but March was terribly dry and a record-setting warm month for us. Our reservoirs, though, those are going to be multi-year situations where we bank that water, we keep it at a certain level, and if we get enough precipitation and snowmelt, we fill it right back up, and that's pretty much what we're dealing with right now. Our biggest reservoirs, Shasta, Trinity, Oroville, all looking good, nearly 90 to 95, even 98% full right now. Folsom, which serves a lot of the metropolitan area for Sacramento, is 98% capacity. So we're almost at 130% of average. And if we travel just south of that, all the reservoirs also looking quite good. Millerton, nearly 90% full, over 125% of average. San Luis Reservoir, that's going to be our off-stream pumped water that we can feed into the aqueduct, and that is 83% capacity, 104% of average. So here's a look at the drought outlook. Now this is going to take us through July.

[00:07:29]We don't get any rain basically in June, July, or August. A couple sprinkles here or there, but it's not a soaker by any means. So it's very likely, obviously, that we're going to dry out. We already know that, and the US Drought Monitor already equates for that. But when we look at the potential for some real big warming that could lead to additional evaporation issues. So, this is what they're putting out. It looks likely that drought will develop by the time we get to the end of July for parts of Northern California and the Central and Southern Sierra. And then drought persisting in the areas that we're already seeing drought exist on the northeast side of California. So, fire outlook kind of goes hand-in-hand with the drought outlook and where drought is currently existing or dryness exists. And we're largely going to see it in the north part of the state. Southern part of the state actually doesn't have a huge push of above chance of significant wildland fire potential. Once we get into the July outlook, then we start to see that expand just a little bit more, especially on the northwest side of the state like Mendocino and Trinity, those areas. And it stays pretty much in place for August as well. So, we'll be watching that. You know, we've been talking about the snow drought. So, certainly a lot of resources are going to be thinned out potentially throughout the west. And that's something to consider. The sooner we can get resources on a fire, the sooner we can get it put out. But when resources are really spread thin, they just do the best they can to tamp down whatever they can and keep it at a low spread.

[00:09:07]This is Wildfire Preparedness Week.

[00:09:09]We're closing in on the last couple of days at this, and this is a really good time to do all those preparations. Clear out the gutters. Get your defensible space cleared out.

[00:09:19]Get your go bag ready. And this is what we talk about with the go bag. It's the five P's: people, pets, papers, prescriptions, and photos. Now, I want to break it down a little bit more. Had Cal Fire in earlier this week, and they really are highlighting the need to have that go bag ready. Practice your evacuation route. And a couple of additional key factors here. So, one bag per person packed with clothes and snacks. Those are going to be non-perishable goods. You don't want to put something in there that's going to expire. Okay, pets, a bag with pet food, toys, necessities, and have carriers ready. Sometimes when evacuation centers are set up, they say you have to have your pet in a carrier, and keep in mind that all evacuation centers will accept pets.

[00:10:05]You have to have a carrier nearly for every evacuation center, too. So, have that ready to go. Next, let's talk about papers. This is a super critical part of that go bag. You want to have your important documents, including identification, insurance, and social security, and a map, a paper map. We've seen time and time again, GPS goes down, people are using their cell phones, they don't know the evacuation route, it's dark, it's smoky, and it's very difficult to navigate. You're trying to figure out which way you're supposed to go. So, having your county's evacuation map on paper, having that in your go bag, can be the critical part of actually being the ones that gets out safely in an evacuation. All right, let's talk about prescriptions now. You want the medicines and medical devices ready to go, and photos, of course, sentimental items that can't be replaced. So, these are really important tools to have getting ready for fire season. In the short-term forecast, we are going to see that warm up, but again, our soil moisture doing pretty well because we saw a wet April and a fairly wet start to May. We're under that ridge of high pressure, and that's going to bring the heat, but then that breeze returns. So, this is a really short-lived little bump up in temperatures. Let's take it and break it down day by day here.

[00:11:29]For our Saturday, we'll see highs in the 60s and 70s. for this year 70s and 80s throughout the foothills along the coast is going to be beautiful highs in the 60s. We've got morning low clouds some of that clearing during the afternoon and we get a little bit of that filtering through the Delta especially by the time we get into inland areas throughout the valley highs are going to be approaching the upper 80s to right around 90° to kick us off for this Mother's Day weekend this year seeing highs near 70 through at least next Tuesday and then for the foothills we're looking at highs 80s kind of brushing right up against 90 from Monday and for the coast will warm things up to near 70 by Monday. That's our peak heat and then things start to quiet down and cool down slightly as we head towards the end of next week but weather impact alert in place through Tuesday expect those highs in the upper 80s to right around 90.