In Santa Monica, Cold Nights Ahead

Get ready to turn the heater up a notch.

Nighttime temperatures in Santa Monica will drop to low 40 degrees Sunday night as a low pressure system over Utah drops south, ushering in below season normals through Thursday. 

The coldest night will be Tuesday, when the low is forecast at 40 degrees. Daytime temperatures will be in the low 60s. 

Strong winds will redevelop late Sunday night in the mountains, with "damaging winds possible," the National Weather Service said. 

The high winds will develop after midnight, and will spread to coastal areas as the sun rises Monday. Gusts reaching 70 mph can be expected in the mountainous areas that traditionally see the highest gusts.

"We're looking for more of your typical Santa Ana affair,'' said Weather Service meteorologist David Sweet. "This will mainly affect the mountains, the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, the Santa Monica Mountains and the Ventura County plains."

The winds will blow along the Los Angeles county coast below passes and canyons from Malibu to Hollywood Monday and Tuesday. A red flag warning is in effect through Tuesday evening as the winds and low humidity will cause high fire dangers, meteorologists said. 

The hard-hit areas of Northeast Los Angeles, Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley foothills, which saw hurricane-force winds Wednesday, will be spared the brunt of Monday's winds.

"We're probably looking at wind gusts of 35 or maybe 40 miles an hour there," Sweet said. In Los Angeles, the Department of Water and Power had up to 138 crews working for four straight nights, and finished fixing 1,600 electrical problems at 10 a.m. today, said spokesman Joseph Ramallo.

Some of those problems affected tens of thousands of people, but all the major storm repairs had been completed by nightfall Saturday, when 1,000 customers had remained dark.

Southern California Edison began Sunday with about 57,573 customer accounts still blacked out. But the company had 273 company and contractor crews replanting poles and restringing lines today, and a spokesman said 95 percent of the customers who lost juice Wednesday should have it by 8 p.m. Sunday night. And 99.9 percent of the outages should be repaired by 8 p.m. Monday, the company vowed in a news statement.

The SCE outages were largely along the San Gabriel Valley foothills from Pasadena east, where "near hurricane force winds" caused flying debris to knock over power poles, the utility's spokesman said.

-- City News Service contributed to this report.