There will be heat.

Gobs of it.

The season's first heat wave is rolling into town, dragging in summer temperatures – and fire danger – at least through Sunday. After a warm-up Wednesday, today could be a record-breaker.

"We will be flirting with the 100-degree mark," said Cynthia Palmer, a weather forecaster for the National Weather Service.

The record for May 15 reaches back to 1927, when the mercury hit 99 in downtown Sacramento.

A hefty high pressure ridge moving into Northern California likely will spend the weekend with us.

Not exactly a welcome guest for Dan Shadoan, president of the Davis Bike Club. The club sponsors a 200-mile bike ride Saturday, which kicks off at dawn, runs through the heat of day and ends at midnight. Heat this early in the season could waylay riders still training in spring coolness.

"We've put out a call for more sag wagons," said Shadoan, who has ridden through snow during the ride in past years.

Shadoan, who was marking the course Wednesday, said that besides calling in those sag wagons – vehicles to shuttle riders from the course – there will be plenty of water, first aid and even cots at stations along the route.

The heat wave even could cook the normally air-conditioned Bay Area with 90-plus temperatures today.

At the storied Alioto's in the heart of Fisherman's Wharf, the heat won't stop the flow of clam chowder or seafood sausage doused in lemon butter, said George Vrakas, one of the restaurant's managers.

"We don't worry," he said, noting that Alioto's has air conditioning to clear out any stuffiness.

Through the restaurant windows, Vrakas said he could already see throngs of people strolling in the warmth on the wharf.

"All the girls have their shorts on. That's something you don't see every day," he said. "I'm in my 70s, but I still like to look."

High winds with gusts up to 40 mph near Sacramento International Airport on Wednesday raised the red flag for firefighters girding for a busy summer even before the season starts.

Dry, hot conditions buffered by wind could combine for a fiery nightmare.

"You grab a weed or grass in your hand and it just crumbles," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for Cal Fire.

The state's fire agency, jittery over an arid spring, moved air tankers onto air bases a month early, Berlant said. Additional firefighters and bulldozers will be on duty in Northern California through the hot spell, he said.

As you're sweating your way through the heat wave, a University of California, Berkeley, professor has reassuring research for you.

Because the nation's population is moving to warmer climates – such as the Sacramento Valley – average life expectancy has increased 5 percent to 10 percent in the past 30 years, said Enrico Moretti, an economics professor.

It is cold, not heat, that is hardest to endure, said Moretti, whose research was published last year in an economics review.

His work concluded that people generally do not die in extreme heat the way they do in extreme cold.

Death rates tend to drop after a heat wave, meaning those who died during the heat already were vulnerable and would have died soon, Moretti said.

But death rates don't drop after cold spells, indicating that the cold claimed some victims who otherwise would not have succumbed, he said.

Moretti, who lives in the Bay Area, said that doesn't make a heat wave any more bearable.

"I'm not denying that people are going to be uncomfortable," he said.