California Deady Wildfire Nightmare Worsens Today/Tomorrow: "Particularly Dangerous Situation"

Yet another fiery scene from southern California.
The fires are forecast to intensify this week, and
more will likely break out under the onslaught
of additional intense, dry desert winds.

 The death toll in the California wildfires sadly but predictably spiraled upward and is now 24, as the Los Angeles area and surrounding counties brace for a new round of incredibly scary wildfires. 

Another "particularly dangerous situation" red flag fire warning has gone up for Los Angeles and Ventura counties from very early Tuesday morning through at least noon Wednesday. 

The particularly dangerous situation wording is reserved for only the most extremely dangerous weather warnings and is used pretty rarely. That wording was of course used last week in Los Angeles County, and we saw what happened. 

Here we go again.

The winds this time won't be quite as strong as they were last week, but that doesn't really matter. They'll be strong enough to either blow existing fires out of control again, or cause new ones to turn into instant firestorms. 

Says the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles: "Areas in the red flag warning..... will have a high risk for large fires with very rapid fire spread, extreme fire behavior and long range spotting."

Long range spotting means embers from the main fire land perhaps miles downwind, setting new, large conflagrations. 

The hot, dry winds off the deserts will affect Ventura County more intensely than last week. Ventura County had winds in the last go around, but they weren't as intense as they were in Los Angeles County.

Additional firefighting equipment has been deployed in the area.  Also, with somewhat calmer weather, planes dumped a lot of red fire retardant on fire-prone hillsides. They hope that fire retardant will act as barriers preventing flames from entering neighborhoods.

But there's only so much you can do when the wind if blowing 40 to 70 mph. 

Though Los Angeles and Ventura counties are most under the gun, fire weather warnings extend from near San Luis Obispo, which is almost up to the central California coast, all the way through San Diego County to the Mexican border. 

As I noted last week, these strong Santa Ana winds peak in the late fall and early winter and tend to diminish later in the season. However, these dry winds do hit occasionally in January.

The problem is the normal winter wet season has failed.  Southern California should have had at least a few inches of rain by this point in the winter. In any other year, it's too wet in mid-January to have any kind of severe fire risk no matter how strong the winds get. 

Long range forecasts continue to provide no rain to southern California, at least until the last week of this month. Meanwhile strong high pressure systems will continue to bluster southward through the Rocky Mountains, possibly for the rest of the month. 

Those high pressure systems in the Rockies are often set up the right pattern for the strong, dry easterly desert winds to blast through southern California. 

Climate change has a hand in this, of course.  California had two oddly wet winters in 2023 and 2024, which made vegetation lush. This winter, it's not raining in southern California like it's supposed to. All that dense vegetation dried out and primed the area for fires. 

That climate change is contributing to newly dramatic swings in weather from wet to dry to hot to cold, and that is causing new problems and disasters all over the world

Including creating those fire conditions that are causing so much suffering in California.  

California Wildfire Nightmare Brings Latest Deadly Climate Calamity; Breadth of Disaster Extreme

Another likely climate-driven mega-disaster.
Enormous wildfires raging now in the Los
Angeles area causing massive destruction.

The Los Angeles area was in flames overnight and this morning. 

Three major wildfires were racing through neighborhoods, destroying an as-yet unknown number of homes and businesses, likely killing and injuring a number of people and causing chaos in the region.

It's the latest climate-related disaster. Strong Santa Ana winds, gusting in the worst instances to 100 mph, are fanning the flames, turning them into blowtorches. Santa Ana winds are usually at the worst in October, November and early December, not in January. 

Although it's too soon to concretely attribute climate change to this calamity, the circumstantial evidence is there. 

Climate change has seemed to turn California's winter's into something much more unpredictable. Either the winter rains are extreme, it seems, or they are nonexistent. 

So far in southern California, the rains are missing. By now, in January,  the hillsides around Los Angeles should have been wet and damp and drippy and green. These horrendous winds should be knocking down some trees and power lines. But the fires should be nonexistent.

Those fires are anything but. 

The reports on the fire early this  morning were hard to keep up with, there was so much new, tragic information coming in.  Worse, since yesterday, the firefighters couldn't keep up with the flames, either completely overwhelmed by the size of the fires, the panicked evacuations, the lack of water, the extreme winds. 

Given the speed of the fires, and the dense neighborhoods they invaded, I'm sadly pretty sure there have been deaths, but as of this writing, there's nothing confirmed. 

The news reports are horrifying. Fox 11 in Los Angeles reported that badly burned people were found staggering along the Pacific Coast Highway overnight.

Early this morning, a Good Morning America reporter stood in a parking lot of the largest supermarket in downtown Pacific Palisades surrounded by flames. The supermarket was reduced to a wall of flame, and all the businesses surrounding the normally busy neighborhood were in flames. 

The first of the fires broke out in Pacific Palisades around 10:30 a.m. local time Tuesday. I watched live news reports in horror as the disaster escalated in the blink of an eye.  Panicked residents fleeing that fire clogged a road, then abandoned their cars and fled on foot. 

The abandoned cars blocked emergency vehicles, so bulldozers were called in to push the Bentleys, Mercedes, Teslas and BMWs from the roads in the wealthy enclave so firetrucks could get to the scene.

Once firefighters got there, they could only watch helplessly as the flames hopscotched from home to home. Hydrants weren't working - for some reason water wasn't coming out of many of them. There wasn't nearly enough personnel to handle the calamity, and the erratic winds send embers flying for miles, starting new fires. 

Buildings all along Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades - one of the most famous streets in the world - were in flames.

Overnight a new fire erupted around Altadena and Pasadena, and that one quickly invaded neighborhoods too. A little while later, a third fire appeared in Sylmar, and the same thing happened.

The L.A. Fire Department called in all off-duty firefighters to come in and help. More than 1,400 firefighters were trying, and so far failing to stop the flames. That's not a knock against these heroes. It's just that no human could stop the exceptionally erratic winds and flames in and near Los Angeles.

The bad stories keep coming:  Residents of an assisted living facility, some on gurneys or in wheelchairs, were huddled in a Pasadena 7-Eleven parking lot in strong gusty winds, having fled an assisted living facility and awaiting transport to....somewhere. Nobody was quite sure. 

The Pacific Palisades fire burned all the way down to the beaches. Video showed life guard stations on the beaches of Malibu up in flames. Numerous beachfront homes along the Pacific Coast Highway  in and near Malibu were also reportedly in flames. 

The Getty Villa Art Museum was also threatened. 

Distressing moments keep popping up on news broadcasts. Like the quick interview of the panicked, tearful man saying he'd been trying for five hours to get to his house to rescue his dogs. (Thankfully, he was eventually reunited with his now-safe pups.) 

The most extreme winds with this Santa Ana event were ongoing early this morning. The winds were forecast to only slowly subside between now and Thursday, so this catastrophe will continue to get worse today. 

This is obviously a developing story and there will be more sad updates to come. It's going to be a long, tragic day in California as yet another likely climate fueled disaster puts us all on edge. 

 Videos: Scary report via Good Morning America had my nerves soaring and my heart breaking. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, click on that.  

The Today show also showed some heartrending, scary reports. Again, click on this link or if you see the image below, click on that. 

California Bracing For Ferocious, Destructive Winds And Extreme Fire Risk

Southern California is hoping to avoid a repeat of this
scene from November as the region gears up for the 
strongest Santa Ana winds in more than a decade 
amid tinder dry conditions. The normal winter'
rains have so far failed to materialize in SoCal. 

UPDATE: 3 p.m EST TUESDAY

Very ominously, large fires have already broken out in parts of southern California, and though its windy, the strongest winds and lowest humidity have yet to arrive,

The largest fire as of noon local time was burning in Pacific Palisades, and I can't keep up with how fast it's growing. Evacuation orders are in in place.

The fire looks to be heading into a heavily developed area, and news media seems to show at least a few houses already on fire.

People are being advised to avoid the Sunset Boulevard are near Pacific Palisades as fire crews are trying to get through to bolster firefighting efforts. 

This is going to get really, really bad.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Southern California should have hit their rainy season by now. 

The risk of wildfires should be relatively low as midwinter Pacific storms dampen the dry brush in the hills and mountains around Los Angeles and San Diego.

Instead, southern California is set to have its most ferocious Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade starting today and peaking Wednesday. And since it hasn't really rained yet this winter in southern California, the fire risk is off the charts. 

Even if by some miracle no fires break out today or tomorrow, this is going to be a huge mess. Forecasters say many, many trees and power lines will snap in this storm, even in areas that are normally protected from these strong easterly Santa Ana winds. 

Meteorologists expect widespread gusts between 60 and 80 mph, with some areas gusting to 100 mph or  more. They describe the impending wind storm and fire risk as "life-threatening" and a "particularly dangerous situation."

Some of the communities most threatened by the wind are in expensive zip codes like Pasadena, Burbank, Hollywood, Sylmar, Simi Valley, Altadena and Malibu. 

The millions of people to be affected by the winds are being told to park cars away from trees, charge their devices and stay indoors and away from windows during the storm. 

More ominously, residents should have a "to go bag" with necessities like medication, insurance papers and other essentials by their front door so they'd be ready to flee in a moment's notice if a wildfires starts.

Power companies plan to shut off electricity in some vulnerable neighborhoods so that if power lines do fall, they won't arc and cause wildfires. Some roads in spots were fires are most likely will be closed to everyone except local residents to give fire trucks and other emergency vehicles easy access to the fires, and to leave room for people to flee in their cars. 

This is the third time this late autumn and winter that southern California has come under extreme risk from high winds and wildfires, though this threat is the worst of the bunch. A Santa Ana event led to a wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in and around Camarillo, California in early November. 

Another Santa Ana storm on and around December 10 with gusts to 80 mph spread more fires and led to  evacuations in Malibu.  In that case, 48 homes were damaged or destroyed by fire.

Celebrities like Cher and Dick Van Dyke had to flee their homes, though their houses ended up being spared. (Van Dyke, just shy of his 99th birthday on the day of the fire, collapsed in his driveway as he tried to untangle a hose and evacuate.  Neighbors rescued him, and he quickly recovered).

Of the three Santa Ana windstorms and fire threats, the one that starts today and peaks tomorrow is by far the worst. 

Though mostly small wildfires are not unheard across southern California in January, usually the threat this time of year is mudslides from heavy rains.  With climate change, the wildfire season in California has expanded and now happens "out of season" during the increasing periods of drought the Golden State has been seeing. 

This threat will be strictly a southern California thing. Central and northern California has been hit be some fairly soggy storms so far this winter, so the fire threat up there is very low. Plus, northern California is not expecting the type of high winds that places like Los Angeles and San Diego counties are about to endure. 

The southern California fire threat is expected to ease by the end of the week. However, little or no rain is in the forecast for southern California until at least the third week in January.