Fall takes its time arriving in LV area

Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2003 | 9:38 a.m.

It may be mid-October, but it's so hot this week that people are going to parks in shorts and tank tops, clutching water bottles and wiping their foreheads.

Temperatures are reaching 10 degrees to 15 degrees above normal each day.

National Weather Service forecaster Larry Jensen said today's temperature was expected to tie or break the record of 91 degrees set in 1940.

The thermometer reached 92 degrees on Monday, short of the record 95 set in 1940.

"A strong ridge of high pressure will remain over the desert Southwest into Wednesday, which will result in well above normal temperatures," Jensen said.

Once a cold front, poised in the Pacific Ocean and packing cold air, pushes the still, hot air eastward, the Las Vegas Valley should cool off Friday and Saturday into the low 80s, maybe the high 70s, Jensen said. There's no rain in sight, but windier conditions will chill the valley this weekend.

People all over Southern Nevada are definitely feeling the heat, which hit 103 degrees in Laughlin on Sunday.

"It felt really hot today," Boulder City resident Roxanne Dey said Monday.

Dey walked her children and their friends to school before going to her job with the National Park Service at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Dey said Park Service rangers have noticed more people coming out to Lake Mead to enjoy the balmy temperatures and little to no winds.

"It's been a little busier out here for October," Dey said.

Watching her two grandchildren play in the plastic tunnels at a Henderson park Monday evening, Marilyn Woods had nothing to complain about.

"This is beautiful," the former California resident said, reading a newspaper and keeping an eye on her charges. Woods said she has been in Southern Nevada for a year.

Two-year resident Debbie Florek noticed how warm it was and said she hadn't thought about breaking out winter jackets.

"It's a little warmer than normal," Florek said. "We moved here from Oregon (where) for three months, in the summer, it was beautiful. The other nine months, forget it."

A New Hampshire native, Florek said she's lived all over the country and likes the weather in Southern Nevada so far.

For Kathy Smith, who was watching a fall baseball game at dusk Monday, the warm October air was different from what she has experienced over her 16 years here.

"I used to notice a real change on Halloween, when I'm taking my kids trick-or-treating," Smith said. "It's usually much cooler."

But in the past few years, it has stayed warmer longer.

"It seems everything about the weather has moved forward, moved up," Smith said. "Maybe the colder weather will come in November."