Valley Readies for Hot, Violent Summer

After a particularly violent night on Tuesday, police have stepped up their patrols in North Hollywood and the Northeast Valley, where a total of six shootings took place.

And how do our council memebers react to the escalation in violence? Why, by asking the mayor for more money to fund their gang intervention programs, that's how.

From the horse's mouth via the DN:

"We are anticipating a hot summer, and things happen when it gets above 100 degrees," said Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose district includes Pacoima, where two shootings Tuesday left three wounded. Alarcon said he is pushing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to speed up the funding of intervention programs in the area before summer. Both Alarcon and Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who represents North Hollywood, are doubling efforts to build Neighborhood Watch programs.

The brazen gun attacks started in Northridge about 6 p.m Tuesday, when a gray SUV with four men inside pulled alongside a 16-year-old boy walking near Wilbur Avenue and Parthenia Street. The boy told police he struggled with one of the men, who stepped out of the car and pointed a pistol at him, while another person emerged from the car and shot him with a shotgun.

An hour later, a fight broke out among nearly a dozen Armenian men outside a restaurant at Whitsett Avenue and Oxnard Street. The men appeared to have been arguing, police said, when a number of them pulled out guns and fired off more than 20 shots. An Armenian male identified as Artak Karamyan, 28, died at the scene. Police said a car-to-car gunbattle ensued, and the body of Paylak Harutyunyan, 29, was dumped at Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Vanowen Street.

The DN has a map and a timeline of the violence that errupted Tuesday night in North Hollywood, Northridge, Sylmar and Arleta.

Is It Hot In Here -- Or Is It Just Me?

So...which area of Hell were you dwelling in yesterday?

Many parts of L.A. broke records for "Hot As Hell" and Woodland Hills in the Valley was one of them.

Ahhh, Valley heat; that special level of Hot Weather intensity not known by anyone living over on the Westside; or in the ocean breeze-kissed beach communities; or even Downtown.

In L.A., the Valley is the Queen of Hot.

The DN lists the records broken yesterday .

From downtown to the ocean and valleys, more than a score of high-temperature records were set or tied on Saturday in the Southland during a third
consecutive weekend of hot weather, according to the National Weather Service. Five records were set or tied in Los Angeles County:

Woodland Hills heated up to 102 degrees, beating the record of 101 set in 1970.

Downtown Los Angeles recorded a high of 96, tying the record set way back in 1892.

Long Beach Airport reached 93, beating the record of 92 set in 1978.

UCLA in Westwood had a high of 92, beating the record of 90 set in 1967.

And Los Angeles International Airport reached 89 degrees, besting the record of 88 set in 1971.

Southern California's three recent record-breaking hot spells have all hit on weekends, which has delighted beachgoers. Meteorologists say the timing has just been coincidence.

"It is unusual that ... our heat waves this spring have predominately affected the weekends," said meteorologist Jamie Meier at the Los Angeles regional office of the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

The heat wave is expected to continue until about midweek, according to the Weather Service.

"By next weekend we will be back into our May gray and June gloom pattern," Meier said.

Meier said the National Weather Service has an official two-word explanation why the heat has occurred as if planned for the weekends:

"Go figure."

The Daily News says it won't be that hot today. According to the AccuWeather chart on their website, it should only reach 95 degrees. Actually, now that I'm looking at it (the AccuWeather forecast) again, it says the high in Woodland Hills yesterday reached 108, and not 102 as the paper reports. Using their math, that means it should really be more like 101 in the Valley!

Please, please, please remember: DO NOT keep your pets locked inside your car when it's so unbearably hot and more importantly, DON'T LEAVE YOUR KIDS IN THE CAR, either...not for a minute.

Remember to drink plenty of water, stay out of the sun during the hottest times of the day and if you know any elderly people who live alone, how about giving them a call or a visit and checking up on them to make sure they're keeping cool. Ask if they need help changing an air conditioning filter, or watering the pads of a swamp cooler.

We all need to look out for those who are especially vulnerable during these hot, hot days.