There is an episode of “ The Twilight Zone ” in which Earth is getting closer to the sun. Temperatures get hotter by the minute. Paint melts off canvases, thieves break into homes to steal water, and highways are jammed with people seeking cooler destinations they will never find.
As the few apartment dwellers who remain in a major city sweat and fret beneath the glaring sun, a radio announcer delivers an unfathomable weather report: Conditions are so hot that people can “fry eggs on sidewalks” and “heat up soup in the ocean.” The temperature he provides in this nightmarish future? 110 degrees. The joke, of course, is that six decades after that episode aired, the prospect of a bone-dry city soaring to 110 degrees is no longer an imaginary horror.
In 2020, Los Angeles recorded its all-time hottest temperature, 121 degrees , in Woodland Hills. Over the last decade, thermometers in that neighborhood have climbed to 110 degrees or hotter at least two dozen times. Without urgent and immediate action, Los Angeles could be trapped in its own version of “The Twilight Zone.
” Will it be a fiery landscape where sizzling sidewalks cause second-degree burns, wildfire smoke blots out the sun, and water flows only sometimes, and mostly not at all? Or will California’s penchant for innovation be our salvation, transforming Los Angeles into a place where every drop of water is recycled and every resident has enough shade and cooling to survive? Here’s a glimpse at what li.