It’s Friday. July has been document sizzling throughout the globe, however most Californians have been spared. Plus, San Francisco’s district lawyer condemns latest assaults on older Asian Americans.

Perhaps you noticed the news yesterday that July is shaping up to be Earth’s hottest month on record, an alarming milestone that displays the cruel actuality of local weather change and is probably going a harbinger of a scorching future. And Southern California this week has been beneath warmth advisories and warnings.

But for probably the most half, it hasn’t been an unusually heat month throughout California.

We’ve had warmth waves and a few inland cities have damaged temperature data. But California is “one of the only locales in the entire world, in fact, that has been, until recently, near or below average, temperature-wise,” Daniel Swain, a local weather scientist at U.C.L.A., told reporters this week.

It’s been an odd climate 12 months right here, beginning with a really wet winter that was adopted by an unseasonably cool spring and early summer — circumstances that have been distinct from these of our planet general.

In reality, there isn’t a complete lot to make of this, apart from that there are year-to-year fluctuations inside an general warming pattern, particularly on the native degree. In different phrases, California continues to be experiencing the impacts of local weather change and usually getting hotter, even when this summer time doesn’t prove to set many data for scorching climate throughout the state, specialists say.

The data which have been set this 12 months have typically been concentrated within the inside of the state. In July, the California cities the place every day excessive temperature data have been damaged included Anaheim, Sacramento, Redding, Merced and Palm Springs. On Thursday, Lancaster set a document excessive of 108 levels.

But as Swain stated: “If you’re living near the coast, you might be saying, ‘What heat wave?’”

Downtown Los Angeles, as an example, shattered a really totally different sort of milestone in 2023: For the primary time since record-keeping started in 1877, the temperature didn’t reach 80 degrees in May or June. Meanwhile, San Francisco has a reputation for being downright chilly this time of 12 months.

As anybody within the Central Valley or Inland Empire can inform you, this bifurcated sample is typical for summer time in California.

As for this weekend, coastal Southern California and the Coachella Valley will stay beneath warmth advisories. But data aren’t anticipated to be damaged, stated Casey Oswant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s workplace in San Diego.

Still, the 12 months is way from over. Swain famous that California’s coastal areas tended to succeed in their temperature peaks throughout autumn heat fronts. The Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center says that there’s higher than even odds that California will expertise above-average temperatures via October — although probabilities will not be as robust as within the South and Southwest.

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Where we’re touring

Today’s tip comes from Kathryn Soll, who lives in Pacific Palisades. Kathryn recommends a visit to Catalina Island within the Channel Islands:

“From the time I was 5 years old, my family has called Catalina Island ‘our little getaway.’ These days I get to the Long Beach dock of the Catalina Express between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., anticipating a glorious two-night stay at Hamilton Cove, a gated, luxury, Mediterranean-style condominium complex. It’s a pleasant splurge, with a friendly Vons market, golf, tennis, snorkeling, a putting green, complimentary golf cart use and clear, blue-water beaches. On the nighttime return, there is a breathtaking view of the Queen Mary lit to the nines! Sigh, all refreshed from a ‘little getaway.’”

Tell us about your favourite locations to go to in California. Email your recommendations to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing extra in upcoming editions of the publication.

And earlier than you go, some good news

This month, a Powerball ticket price $1.08 billion was offered in downtown Los Angeles, bringing pleasure to the neighborhood and to the household that owns the comfort retailer the place it was doled out, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The household that owns the store immigrated to California from El Salvador a number of years in the past.

“We’re immigrants, and our family has made the business a success, and we have made this our dream,” stated Angelica Menjivar, whose mother and father opened the enterprise in 2017. “We show that it’s possible for anyone to make it.”

The retailer will obtain a $1 million bonus for promoting the successful ticket, in line with the California State Lottery. The household stated the bonus cash would most definitely be put right into a financial savings account to make sure that its youngest members can attend faculty.