Starting today, the City of Lathrop will be opening a cooling center to give residents a safe place to beat the heat as the mercury soars across the Western United States.

Manteca will open its cooling center on Friday, Sept, 2, and plans to keep it open through Tuesday, Sept, 6 from 1 to 9 p.m. each day. The Manteca cooling center will be at the Manteca Transit Center, 220 Moffat Boulevard on Friday Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. On Sunday, the cooling center will be at the Manteca Senior Center 295 Cherry Lane.

 Lathrop’s cooling center, which will be located at the Lathrop Community Center at 15557 5th Street, will be open from noon to 7 p.m. through Tuesday, September 6 – a response to triple-digit heat that is expected to broil the Northern San Joaquin Valley and place massive stress on California’s power grid.

According to Accuweather, it is expected to be 104 degrees in Lathrop today – and to heat up to 111 degrees by Monday, September 5. Temperatures in Lathrop are expected to stay at or above 100 degrees through Friday, September 9 and are believed to drop into the low 90’s – a nearly 20-degree swing in just over a week – by Sept. 11.

“The cooling zone is designed to provide our Lathrop residents a safe place to escape the high temperatures of the day should current living conditions not provide adequate relief,” the city said in a statement announcing the activation of the facility.

While most homes in Lathrop have air conditioning, the excessive burden that the scorching heat will place on California’s already-strained power grid has some experts in Sacramento worried about the possibility of forced blackouts due a lack of available energy.

This week the California Independent System Operator – which oversees and managed the state’s power grid – issued a directive to market suppliers that effectively orders them not to conduct scheduled maintenance and to ensure that all available portions of their delivery network are operational.

The directive, known as Restricted Maintenance Operations, will remain in place through September 6th from 12 to 6 p.m. each day.

In the event of a power outage, the city would likely keep the cooling center at the Lathrop Community Center open because it has a generator for backup electricity, or temporarily relocate the site that is better suited for the need.

While the cooling center will remain open to the public from noon to 7 p.m. through September 6, if nobody is utilizing the facility by 6 p.m. on each of those days the site will close early.

For additional information about the cooling center or localized updates about the pending heat wave if necessary, visit the City of Lathrop’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thecityoflathrop. For additional information about how to prepare for the heat and stay safe in scorching conditions visit www.ready.gov/heat.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.