What Are Heat Waves Like in Los Angeles?

Are You Traveling to Los Angeles or the Southwestern United States for the First Time?

The heat in the Southwestern United States is No Joke Status, and if you’re from an area that enjoys mild weather throughout the year, or you’re used to freezing temperatures as your norm, you’re in for a toasty treat should you decide to visit Los Angeles in August or any month near it.

Los Angeles is HOT in the summer, and only a spot right next to the ocean will reward you with cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, staying right next to the coast usually comes with a higher price tag, too, because those ocean views do cost a bit more than some of the other options that are more inland.

But let’s not focus on how much it costs to visit Los Angeles Rather, let’s talk about the sort of weather you might experience during a heatwave in Los Angeles, and how to keep safe during the hot temperatures. Even though one of Southern California’s biggest selling points its its year-round beautiful weather, it still gets rip roaringly hot every year.

After all, Los Angeles is only a few hundred miles away from the hottest place on earth: Death Valley, which is so hot that the area routinely breaks heat records in an era when heat records are continuously being broken all over the world

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Most Places Are Air Conditioned in Los Angeles, California

The one saving grace for travelers to Los Angeles during the city’s hottest months is that most places that are any distance from the coast have air conditioning. Even most of the hotels – no matter whether they’re on the coast or inland – have air conditioning. Having an AC is almost universal at this point in Los Angeles, especially for commercial buildings.

Occasionally, you might find a short term rental that doesn’t have air conditioning, but this factor will usually be spelled out quite clearly when you arrange to stay. Sometimes, older places near the coast won’t have air conditioning, or they might just have a window unit in the bedroom rather than a central air conditioning unit.

A lot of the older and most affordable hotels will also have those big window units that are welded into the wall, rather than a ducting system of vents throughout the room. Most of these units work just fine, even when the temperature soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the summer.

Just about all of your restaurants, most indoor tourist spots, and anywhere else you might visit or tour in Los Angeles are going to have some sort of cooling system, too. In a pinch, if you’re particularly hot and can’t find a place to cool off, one tried-and-true option is to go to the movie theaters. They’re always icy cold and have big seats for relaxing.

Los Angeles Isn’t Nearly As Humid As Other Coastal Areas

One thing to consider about the hot weather in Los Angeles is that it’s not crazy humid like you might find in Hawaii, Southeast Asia, or south of the border in Mexico. Yes, it can get humid in Los Angeles, but not for very long, and the humidity just isn’t as bad as it is in places where the beach meets the jungle.

Here, the beach meets the desert, and the air is either fairly dry or only mildly humid. If you hail from an arid place – maybe you’re visiting from a locale where it’s very dry most of the year – you may feel some of the humidity in the air.

But for the most part, and for most of the year, the humidity isn’t really crazy. It’s not like Florida or any of the states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, you’ll get a marine layer and some dew on your car rental some mornings, but you’ll never have that feeling of stepping out of the shower and being unable to dry off because it’s so humid outside.

Realistically, the lower average humidity is one of the facets of the Southern California climate that makes the really hot temperatures bearable. You will definitely sweat when you’re here and it’s 90+ degrees (again, we’re talking Fahrenheit here because I’m an uncultured American), but the sweating will keep your body cool, as nature intended.

Stay Hydrated: You Can Drink the Tap Water in Los Angeles

If you visit Los Angeles in the summer or early fall, when temperatures regularly hit 100 when you’re 10 or 20 miles inland from the coast, keeping a bottle of water around you is always a good idea, especially if you’re walking around Los Angeles. However, if you’re in a pinch, you can drink from literally any faucet.

The City of Los Angeles has a great water system, and the water is safe to drink, as long as you’re not drinking from super corroded pipes. The water that comes from drinking fountains is fine to drink, and so is the water from virtually any sink faucet you may come upon. You can literally walk up to a faucet on the side of a house and drink from it (not that you should if you don’t live there, but still!).

You don’t absolutely need to spend money on bottled water, and you don’t even need to purify it or run it through any sort of purification tablets. Just drink it straight from the faucet. I’ve been drinking water straight from the faucet in Los Angeles for the past 24 years (since I moved here), and I’ve never had a single problem with it.

I highly recommend getting a metal insulated bottle, too, to carry around cold water when you’re touring various Los Angeles sights. There’s nothing more amazing than opening your reusable water bottle that you filled several hours before and finding that the water is still cool, crisp, and fresh. If you’re in a pinch, a bottle of water from the store is fine, but you can keep your food/water costs low by drinking water from the tap.

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