Record temperatures and rain are basting the northern coast of California, a region known for brisk ocean breezes and chilly nights all year long.

In Crescent City, a coastal town just south of the Oregon border, the mercury dipped to 60 degrees early Monday morning - 3 degrees higher than the previous overnight low-temperature record, which stood for 15 years. The overnight record is also known as the "maximum minimum."

Also last week in Del Norte County, the northernmost county along the California coast, a storm front dumped .36 inches of rain in a single day. That easily topped the previous daily record of .29, set in 1958.

In Eureka, about 270 miles north of San Francisco, temperatures in the low 70s broke records four days straight, from Friday to Monday. On Saturday, the temperature hit 74 degrees, shattering a 1901 record by 5 degrees and exceeding the daytime average high by 11 degrees, according to a National Weather Service climate report.

Those temperatures may seem downright cool to residents of the Central Valley, where the mercury often reads in the triple digits. But the coastal warm front caused entrepreneurs to order more fans, ice cream and other hot-weather goods.

"This is the busiest summer we've ever had," Nicole Cowan, who works at Eureka's Bon Boniere Ice Cream parlor, told the Times-Standard newspaper in Eureka.

Weather forecasters blame the extreme weather on warmer surface sea temperatures, extensive cloud cover, and winds blowing from the southwest to west.

The relative heat wave in the region is expected to end later this week, as winds shift. But a low pressure area will keep temperatures soaring in inland areas in the northernmost reaches of California, National Weather Service-Eureka Forecaster Jeff Lewitsky told The Daily Triplicate in Crescent City.