AccuWeather California Expert Ken Clark warns of an increased fire threat in Southern California due to the effects of Santa Ana winds blowing from the mountains with gusts of 40-80 mph possible.
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00:00Accuweather meteorologist and California expert Ken Clark. Ken Clark has four decades of experience
00:08here at Accuweather and he joins us from Rancho Cucamonga here this morning in California. You
00:14know, Ken, of course, as a Southern California native and those that live in Southern California,
00:19the term Santa Ana winds is well known, but for those that live elsewhere in the country,
00:24it may be a little bit of a mystery. Let's break down what the Santa Ana is.
00:30Sure, it's winds that basically blow from northeast to southwest across Southern California.
00:35They go from the deserts to the coast and they're amplified by several factors. One is how strong
00:40the winds are aloft, how strong the pressure gradient is from the inland areas to the coast,
00:45and if everything is aligned right and the strongest winds are throughout the depths of
00:50the atmosphere, we get the very strongest winds such as the case today. These are very dry winds.
00:56They dry out as they cross the mountains and descend into the coastal areas, and that's why
01:00we not only have windy conditions in this kind of situation, but we also have a very high fire
01:07danger because the relative humidities get to be very, very low. Yeah, and let's go over the
01:12pattern, Ken, that's producing this. I want to show you the water vapor loop. You can see that
01:17big dip in the jet stream. There it is coming across Nevada and into Utah, and it's on the
01:23western side of that jet stream. In this place, the upper low, you could see the winds coming in
01:31out of the east-northeast or the north-northwest, Ken, and that's the problem. And again, it doesn't
01:37necessarily mean it's right at the coast, but it's almost like water through a pipe, right? It goes
01:42through those canyons and passes and it just accelerates. There are favorite areas that get
01:47these kind of winds. Ventura County, especially Ventura County coastal areas, the mountains,
01:53down across parts of the Inland Empire, eastern L.A. County, San Bernardino County, and across
01:59Orange County as well, and all the mountains of Southern California. Actually, downtown L.A.
02:04doesn't get a lot of Santa Ana winds. It happens very rarely. They're shielded from it, but other
02:09areas are not, and those are the areas that have the extreme fire danger we have right now.
02:15And again, let's talk about how strong this setup is.
02:19Right now, we're experiencing winds of 25 to 45 miles per hour. I've seen gusts as high as
02:24Hurricane Force across the Orange County mountains this morning, 77 miles per hour at Fremont Canyon
02:32about an hour ago. It may be even stronger than that right now. These high mountain areas can get
02:37wind gusts that are very, very strong that people don't really see but are occurring,
02:42and they are important for one thing. A lot of the high transmission power lines cross these
02:47high mountains, and we have a danger of these higher tension wires coming down in these kind
02:54of high wind situations. And that's why, Ken, we have something we haven't seen.
02:59This was very surprising to me. We have an extreme fire danger today. When's the last time we had
03:05that? We haven't had one like this since 2020. The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles
03:11issued a PDS or particularly dangerous situation for the fire weather across portions of Southern
03:17California, and that hasn't happened since December of 2020. And Ken, explain really quickly,
03:27how much of a problem does this cause in Southern California?
03:33Unfortunately, as a fire takes place, especially this morning into this afternoon,
03:38it can grow extremely quickly. I mean, we're talking going from an acre fire to hundreds of
03:44acres of fire in less than an hour, and they get out of control. There's no way to control them,
03:50basically because the winds are so strong. They can't send up airplanes to drop
03:55a FOS check, which helps to keep the fires down. They can't do water droppings. They can't send in
04:02really fire crews in this kind of situation either. So this is why it's a particularly
04:06dangerous situation. Fires spread very rapidly. Let's hope that doesn't occur,
04:11but it is a very much of a possibility.