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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels Summer sizzles in city By Amber Fossen Ashland Daily Tidings You bet it's toasty. But that's not so unusual. Ashland's latest heat wave is scheduled to peak at 98 degrees Saturday - a few degrees cooler than Medford's sweltering 102. And while it is hotter than last year's 86 degrees for the day, deviations from the normal temperature, are, well, normal, according to the local forecasters. Johnathon Magnus gives his dog Dharma a cooling bath in Ashland Creek. Ashland Daily Tidings/CHRIS MILLER Mike O'Brien, a meteorologist at National Weather Service in Medford, said for the last 25 years, fluctuations in temperature - causing record-breaking highs and lows - are a repeated pattern every summer. We're in an upswing right now, he said. "It is normal, or common or average to have departures from the norm," O'Brien said of the hotter-than-usual weather this week. O'Brien said high temperatures in the area are the result of a thermal trough - a low pressure region with warm temperatures on the surface - moving to the East. Winds are expected to switch from east to west bringing temperatures down into the mid-80s next week. To battle the soaring heat, Johnathon Magnus, his four children and two-month-old labrador retriever Dharma played in the water at Lithia Park Friday. "We just drove here from Salt Lake City (Utah). We have been in the car for 18 hours straight, and this is the first thing we did," Magnus said, while sitting partially submerged in the creek. At Upper Granite Street Reservoir, people of all ages floated, stood and soaked themselves in water Friday afternoon - playing less and lounging more to beat the heat. O'Brien said relative humidity for today would be at 83 percent at the low temperature and 16 percent at the high temperature. "Our relative humidity changes dramatically during the day. But our perceptions of that are heavily impaired by our cooling system," he said. "When it's the cool part of the day, we don't perspire so we might say it's not humid." However, O'Brien said the opposite is true. The coolest part of the day is often the most humid and the highs are generally less humid. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams