“It never used to be like this,” the hairdresser said to me as I sat down in the chair.

It’s a common refrain from people who’ve been in San Diego for decades. It’s 93° outside—hot for the summer and extremely rare for October. While this particular establishment has air conditioning, that’s not the case everywhere. The hairdresser joked that maybe I wanted a buzzcut because of the heat.

You see signs of the heat everywhere. The virtually empty bars that would normally be packed with Padres fans. The freezers at the grocery store out of commission from overwork. You think it’s just an isolated issue until you see the second freezer sitting inoperable in as many days. Or you hear the recent transplants complaining about their apartments. Everyone told them they didn’t need air conditioning. It’s San Diego that’s the reason people move here. It’s nice all year around. Not anymore.

The San Diego International Airport hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, a new record high for October 4. The city was hotter than Dubai over the weekend, and it’s shaping up to be an absolutely wild winter thanks to the Super El Niño. It was even hotter inland, away from the water.

Nobody is prepared for just how weird this winter is going to be, according to the climate scientists . But San Diego in particular has challenges unique to cities on the West Coast in the age of increasingly dire climate change—from San Francisco to Seattle.

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