Currently in Los Angeles — August 28, 2023: Warmest temps of the year so far

The weather, currently.

The heat is on across the Southland, with abundant 90s inland on Sunday, with even warmer weather on tap today and tomorrow. Downtown L.A. will be the warmest it’s been since last fall, with mid to upper 90s likely. In the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys, triple digits will be the norm. This is why I always tell visitors summer really doesn’t start in California until late August into September. Santa Monica and Venice, however, will still stubbornly be around 80 degrees.

— Ade Adeniji

What you need to know, currently.

Tropical Storm Idalia formed over the weekend, and is ramping up its intensity on a trajectory towards Florida.

Tampa Bay is currently in the cone of uncertainty for Idalia. Up to 11 feet of storm surge is expected from Idalia near the exact landfall location, with about 3-5 feet expected in the Tampa Bay region.

Since records began in 1850, only 5 hurricanes have ever directly struck the Tampa Bay region. Since the last one struck in 1946, the region’s population has grown 10-fold, from around 300,000 to more than 3 million today.

Due to the gentle sloping of the seafloor on the Florida Gulf coast, this area is especially prone to coastal flooding from hurricanes. In a worst-case scenario, a major hurricane making landfall just north of Tampa Bay could funnel as much as 26 feet of storm surge into the bay. Last year, a study found that the Tampa Bay metro area was even more vulnerable than New Orleans to storm surge flooding — second only to Miami and New York in the US.

—Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

The fires in Maui have struck at the heart of Hawaiian heritage, and if you’d like to support survivors, here are good places to start:

The fires burned through the capital town of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the ancestral and present home to native Hawaiians on their original unceded lands. One of the buildings destroyed was the Na ‘Aikane o Maui cultural center, a gathering place for the Hawaiian community to organize and celebrate.

If you’d like to help the community rebuild and restore the cultural center, a fund has been established that is accepting donations — specify “donation for Na ‘Aikane” on this Venmo link.