Bay Area residents can look forward to a break in the triple-digit heat on Tuesday before scorching temperatures return for the Labor Day weekend, forecasters said.

The Bay Area got smacked early in the week as the mercury climbed into the 100s in the inland East Bay and higher elevations in the North and South Bay.

The National Weather Service issued an excessive-heat warning for the hottest locations. Livermore and the surrounding areas hit 106 degrees Monday, just slightly below Sunday’s high of 107.

The heat warning was to expire at 9 p.m. Monday with temperatures falling 10 degrees or more in the hottest areas by Tuesday, forecasters said.

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“Long story short — it’s going to be ... cooler Tuesday and hot again later into the weekend,” said Scott Rowe, a meteorologist with the weather service’s office in Monterey.

The mini-heat wave comes amid a summer that has been punctuated by several intense periods of hot weather. But things seemed to mellow out in recent weeks, with the previous triple-digit day coming in early August, Rowe said.

Residents without air-conditioning were taking advantage Monday of cooling centers in the hottest spots.

At the Brentwood Senior Activity Center on Griffith Lane, more than 100 seniors were filing in for the usual Monday game of bingo.

“There might be more people just because of the weather,” said Yolanda Brown, the front desk greeter and receptionist at the senior center.

In areas closer to the rim of the bay, like San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose, temperatures were between 85 and 95. The weather service issued a heat advisory for those locations on Monday.

Closer to the ocean, the weather was more bearable. A mild sea breeze kept things cooler, but abruptly stopped a few miles inland where the heat started to set in.

The heat wave is a result of a large area of high pressure hovering over Nevada and Utah that is extending into Central and Southern California.

That pressure is compressing the air in the Bay Area and keeping the onshore flow of air from moving inland.

The system is also influencing the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. The high pressure is one factor keeping the storm from coming inland where it would ultimately dissipate.

The remnants of the hurricane continue to hover over the Houston area, causing widespread disastrous flooding that has displaced thousands of residents.

In the Bay Area, firefighters were working to get a handle on a 44-acre brush fire burning in steep and rugged terrain around Livermore.

The fire was one of more than two dozen burning around California as some of the most historically destructive months of fire season approach.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky