Record high temperatures in parts of Bay Area and fire danger for California

OAKLAND, Calif. - High winds and hot temps are making for fire danger conditions in January, a month which usually is beset by dips in the mercury and rain.

Not so in California where temperatures were warm all weekend.

"It's going to be crazy warm," said KTVU meteorologist Steve Paulson. 

The National Weather Service recorded record high temperatures in San Francisco and Oakland for the date of Jan. 18 and temperatures in the 70s across most of the region, drying out the Bay Area to a concerning degree, according to the agency.

The agency has also issued a fire weather watch through 3 p.m. Tuesday for parts of California and a wind advisory between 10 p.m. Sunday and 6 p.m. Tuesday in the North and East bays as well as San Francisco, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. The wind advisory will also go into effect in Monterey County at 4 p.m. Monday.

The conditions with warm, dry winds blowing from the northeast are more common in the fall than in the winter.

It's also unusual for a wind advisory to be in place for 48 hours. KTVU's Mark Tamayo said they usually last for six to 12 hours.

Wind speeds between 15 and 25 mph are expected, according to the weather service, with gusts as high as 70 mph at altitudes above 1,000 feet. 

Pacific Gas and Electric reported around 11 a.m. that 4,700 customers across the Bay Area experienced power outages with the bulk of those customers in Vallejo. 

The electric company said it does not anticipate triggering a PSPS event thanks to recent rains and relatively high humidity levels.

Hot: 2020 sets yet another global temperature record

It's not just California that is hot. It's the entire planet.

The Earth’s rising fever hit or neared record hot temperature levels in 2020, global weather groups reported last week. 

Scientists said all you had to do was look outside: "We saw the heat waves. We saw the fires. We saw the (melting) Arctic," said NASA top climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. "We’re expecting it to get hotter and that’s exactly what happened."

Temperatures the last six or seven years "really hint at an acceleration in the rise of global temperatures," said Russ Vose, analysis branch chief at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. While temperature increases have clearly accelerated since the 1980s, it’s too early to discern a second and more recent acceleration, Schmidt said.

Last year's exceptional heat "is yet another stark reminder of the relentless pace of climate change, which is destroying lives and livelihoods across our planet," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century."

The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.