It hit 115 degrees in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, breaking the city's all-time high-temperature record of 113 degrees set in 1913. And that wasn't even the only Bay Area city to see its all-time record broken.

As we enter the seventh day of this heatwave cursing our lack of air conditioning (many of us), we should all:

1) be grateful that there aren't any nearby wildfires so we can keep our windows open and actually breathe

2) knock off work early and head to the beach because that's the only thing that makes sense and you need to take your beach days when you can around here

In addition to Santa Rosa breaking its all-time record on Tuesday, San Jose broke it's all-time record of 108 degrees hitting 109 yesterday, and Napa also broke its record, hitting 114 degrees. The record in Napa of 113 degrees was set in 1961.

Fairfield has been roasting for several days, and that city saw the Bay Area's regional all-time record-high temperature broken on Monday when it hit 117 degrees. Livermore wasn't much better, hitting 116 on Monday and then 113 yesterday.

Temperatures may fall slightly again on Wednesday, but we won't be seeing a lot of relief — and the state's power grid is again expected to be strained during peak hours starting around 5 p.m. So, everyone with electric cars and air conditioning is being asked to not charge/use those between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.

The state's energy demand went right up to the brink of capacity on Tuesday, hitting 52,061 megawatts. As the Chronicle reports via a California Independent System Operator (CAISO) bulletin, that was 3% higher than a demand record of 50,270 megawatts set in 2006.

Wednesday's load was forecast to be 50,002 megawatts.

As the New York Times notes, Governor Gavin Newsom has political reasons to not want any rolling blackouts to occur this week, after he's spent months trolling Texas Governor Greg Abbott over the power grid issues in that state — likely with presidential aspirations in mind.

"Record-breaking temperatures. More demand on our energy grid than ever before. But we avoided emergency power outages tonight," Newsom said in a tweet. "We can do this. If we keep it up we can get through this unprecedented heatwave."

All Californians are again being asked to "pre-cool" their homes before 4 p.m. today, turn off unnecessary lights and appliances, and not do any laundry or run dishwashers until after 9 p.m.

And it should be noted that PG&E is now paying customers to do this stuff. If you use less energy than you normally would during peak hours on Flex Alert days, PG&E will credit your bill $2 per kilowatt hour saved. This goes for future heatwaves as well.

Photo: Matthew Henry