Global Warming Update: Overcoat Summer

If you've ever been to Sacramento in the summer, chances are you'll recall the experience because it is, in a word, hot. Except not this year:

The maximum temperatures Sunday and Monday set records each day -- as the coolest "highs" for the dates since record-keeping began in 1877.

Forecasters credit a deep marine layer and a potent low-pressure trough with funneling the cool air this way. It's as if Mother Nature cut herself a wedge of Santa Barbara weather and plopped it down on Sacramento's plate.

We're talking, for once, about the all-time lowest maximums, instead of the all-time highest. Monday's downtown high was just 74 degrees, 3 degrees cooler than the previous record of 77 degrees set in 1906, according to the National Weather Service. Sunday's downtown high of 76 frosted the previous low maximum of 78, set in 1962.

"These were the coldest highs for Aug. 5 and Aug. 6 that we've ever recorded," said meteorologist Cynthia Palmer of the National Weather Service office in Sacramento. (Sacto Bee)

Even if no one tells Al., his bud, the ever more green Arnie ("The Greenanator") Schwarzenegger happens to live in Sacto, and may have noticed.