Particularly Dangerous Fire Weather Returns to California Today; Could Create More Havoc After A Weekend Weather Break

A fire-ravaged neighborhood in California. Another spell
of extreme fire danger is starting in the Los Angles area
this afternoon, lasting at least into Tuesday.

Here we go again. It just doesn't end.

Southern California is now under big time fire warnings as the super dry winter continues and another round of exceptionally dangerous fire weather kicks in again. 

For the third time this month, the National Weather Service has issued what I guess was a once rare "particularly dangerous situation" warning for the fires. 

The hardest hit areas should have gusts in the 50 to 70 mph range this afternoon through Tuesday morning. Mountain areas could see gusts between 80 and 100 mph. 

Those kinds of winds would once again create extreme fire behavior and send embers miles ahead of the main blaze to start new blazes. If any fires start in this region today or tonight, they're absolutely screwed. 

Communities at highest risk include Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Ventura, Oxnard and once again Malibu, which was hard hit during the last go-around with fires. 

"'All of the alarm bells are ringing and all of the lights are flashing red,' UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a briefing Sunday," as the Washington Post reports.

As in previous wind events this month, utilities are considering shutting off power to wind-prone electrical lines so that they don't spark fires if they snap in the gusts.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has deployed additional firefighters to southern California to get a jump on any new fires that might start. 

NOAA's Fire Weather Forecast warns of extremely critical fire weather in and near the San Gabriel, Santa Monica and Santa Susana Mountains in southern California.

Although the winds will abate somewhat Tuesday afternoon, they'll continue dry and gusty at least into Thursday, continuing the fire threat. 

 The San Diego area and the mountains to its east are also under the gun for strong, dry winds today that  could set off fast moving, scary fires there.  The San Diego area has so far been spared the worst of this month's California fire nightmare. I'm not sure it will continue, but let's hope so

The renewed winds could undo some real progress over the past few days with the giant wildfires. As far as I've heard, no additional houses have burned down in recent days. 

NBC4 in Los Angeles reported as of Sunday, the biggest blaze, the Palisades Fire, is at the halfway point of containment, and has so far burned 23,700 acres. It has so far destroyed 3,857 structures, if you include residential, commercial and other buildings. It has damaged 628 other structures.

The Eaton Fire, the one that chewed through neighborhoods in Altadena, is more than three-quarters contained. This fire was even more calamitous than the other one, having destroyed 9,300 homes, businesses and other buildings and damaged 1,044 others, says NBC 4. 

So far the death toll is 27, with 31 additional people reported as missing. I'm praying today and tomorrow don't make this statistic worse.

There is some hope. The forecast is a little iffy, but there's at least the possibility of rain -finally - in southern California this weekend. It's unknown how much rain will fall. It could be a bust, it could be a decent half inch of water.  

Let's hope that storm ends up materializing@ 

 What would take if you had minutes to leave?  The Washington Post had a great article in which they asked people who fled what they hastily grabbed as the flames bore down on their houses.

Really a great read.  

 

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 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.  

Another Southern California Wildfire Blast Likely This Week

The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles is
putting out some pretty dire warnings about the wildfire
risk in the region starting tonight and going 
through Wednesday at leas

 Parts of southern California are bracing for another onslaught of  dangerous wildfire weather, similar to conditions in early November that led to the destruction of dozens of homes. 

The National Weather Service office in the Los Angeles area is warning of "extreme and life-threatening fire behavior today through Wednesday, but especially overnight and much of Tuesday.  

Arid Santa Ana winds gusting around 50 to 80 mph are expected later today, tonight and tomorrow in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Humidity levels will be under 10 percent in many areas, which is scary dry. The red flag warning for wildfires are calling this a "particularly dangerous situation," wording reserved for only the most dire conditions. 

Forecasters said the conditions were like those that led to the 2017 Thomas Fire, which destroyed 1,000 structures in and around Santa Barbara.

The winds will be so strong that embers could be carried by the gusts for miles, starting new, fast moving blazes far from the original wildfire. 

The strong winds will likely topple trees and power lines. Those snapped power lines can of course start those fast-moving wildfires.  Power companies are considering cutting electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers so that the lines won't start fires if they blow down.

We'll of course have updates as this situation develops. Hoping there's a miracle and we don't see any wildfires out of this.