Dangerous Winds & Fire Danger
We are looking at a round of strong and potentially damaging Santa Ana winds, and extreme fire danger. This is another “PDS,” or Particularly Dangerous Situation, Red Flag Warning.
Here’s some more info...as always, feel free to mention or message me if you have any questions. Please share with others to help increase awareness.
TLDR:
- This is NOT a “run-of-the-mill” wind storm, please monitor the forecast over the next few days.
- Red Flag Warning starts Tuesday for nearly the entire region (including all of LA County).
- Strongest Winds will be on Tuesday & Wednesday
- Downed trees and power outages are likely
- Strong gusts are possible through areas that don’t typically see Santa Ana winds, like DTLA and the Basin.
Many areas are under consideration for Public Safety Power Shutoffs, you can view SCE’s map here: SCE Outages Page
Here are preparedness tips from CalFire for fire prone areas like the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI): Ready For Wildfire
Setup/Getting Ready
A near perfect alignment of a few elements in the atmosphere will be creating a very strong Santa Ana wind. The pattern has the jet stream sitting directly over SoCal, oriented from NE to SW, which helps to enhance the winds in the lower atmosphere. At the same time, a pool of cold air is arriving, which is helping to enhance the wind speeds.
Winds will peak on Tuesday and Wednesday, before starting to let up by Wednesday night into Thursday.
I highly recommend taking in or securing anything that can be blown in the wind.
Gust Strength
The wind speeds will vary by location. For our typical Santa Ana Wind Prone areas (western San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita Valley, Ventura Co, LA County Coast, IE, and OC) we will see gusts of 50-80+mph.
However, this round of wind is a bit different than some of our other Santa Ana Winds...there’s enough support in the atmosphere to create possible “mountain waves,” opening the door for extremely strong gusts (80+mph) through some communities adjacent to mountains/foothills…including the San Fernando Valley, Simi Valley, Santa Monica Mountains/Hollywood Hills, and San Gabriel Valley. Most of this wave activity looks to happen overnight Tuesday through Wednesday.
If you remember the Pasadena Wind Storm on Nov 30-Dec 1, 2011, that was an example of mountain wave activity. Over 1000 trees came down in that event, and there were lots of downed power lines.
Example of some strong gusts and mountain wave activity through parts of the SGV
Fire Danger
We haven’t had any rain recently, and the winds are going to be strong, so we are looking at extreme fire danger for the next several days. The Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index has our area under "HIGH," meaning that any new fires would grow rapidly, burn intensely, and be very difficult to control.
Make sure to monitor the weather and official channels, especially if you live in fire prone areas or near the Wildland-Urban interface.
