From The LA Times

The San Gabriel Mountains dusted with snow were a rare but beautiful backdrop above downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 6. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Home restaurant’s sprawling outdoor patio in Los Feliz, set under a canopy of large trees, was designed to take advantage of California’s temperate climate and typically sunny skies.

But this February has been so cold that the restaurant scrambled to set up extra heaters outside the Craftsman-style house to keep diners and workers warm during the record-setting cold winter.

“We had three heaters going for a while and this month it just hasn’t been enough,” said Sam Yoo, a manager at the restaurant. “I’m trying to have the waiters and hostesses wear warmer clothing, but I have one heater set up right by the host stand so they don’t catch colds.”

For the first time since forecasters began recording data — at least 132 years — the mercury did not reach 70 degrees in downtown Los Angeles for the entire month of February.

The average high for the month was 61 degrees, significantly lower than the historical average of 68 for February. That makes it the eighth-coldest February on record, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“Most of the time we’ll get one or two Santa Ana wind events in between the rain that would give us temperatures above 70 degrees,” he added. “But it’s just been back-to-back storms and no offshore flows.”

It’s a big change for Southern California, where temperatures having been rising to record levels in recent years along with a prolonged drought. Weather experts said the chilly February doesn’t signal a larger change in some of those trends.

Read the full story here.