AccuWeather's Jon Porter was live on the AccuWeather Network on Jan. 24 to discuss the wildfire situation in Southern California.
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00:00live look at Los Angeles here this morning and here's your first kind of a glimpse at Los Angeles
00:06and the fact that you don't have any clouds not a cloud in the sky tells you that we don't have
00:11an onshore flow we have an offshore flow temperatures already in the 50s and it is
00:16just bone dry in California with that I want to bring in our chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter
00:23you know John since the fire danger has been going on and the fires have been burning especially the
00:29pacific palisades fire which caused so many damage you know we we look into this to give
00:34some context to our audience for people to understand just how costly now we know it's
00:41been deadly but how costly these fires have been and this is a pretty big number John
00:47you know not all that dissimilar to the kind of numbers we see with hurricanes no a major
00:54hurricane hit when you look at the types of impacts that were happening from from Hurricane
00:58Helene and also it's on the same order a bit higher than Hurricane Milton's impacts in the
01:04United States but still to your point in that ballpark at 250 to 275 billion dollar total
01:11damage and economic loss from those fast-moving wind-driven infernos and the the impact here is
01:17going to take years and even a decade in some cases with a lot for people to rebuild and get
01:23back to where some of these communities were before the fire affected them and also the other
01:29point is there's going to be a long tail of health impacts here due to because of the just dangerous
01:36air pollution really that was all the smoke that was lofted in the air by these fires as well so
01:41lots of issues for a long time in these areas. I call it a perfect storm in Southern California
01:47John because the last two the last two winter months we had storm after storm after storm
01:53that produced all of the rain in California then as is normally the case what we start seeing is
02:00you start getting a lack of rain during the spring months but usually the rains come back
02:07as we get into the December but December and January and you could just see how quickly
02:13things can change in California we started to dry things out but I think you and I both agree on this
02:18the key is the wind when the wind blows the fires start burning in California unfortunately we've
02:25seen that connection for decades here but certainly the dry conditions really were one of the
02:31ingredients for those fires. It made it like a tinderbox and when you did get that wind all of
02:38that dried out vegetation was at great risk of of spreading those fires very quickly and you can see
02:44the tale of two Californias here look at what's been happening here across Southern California
02:49intense dryness and building short-term drought but across Northern California where there has
02:55been some rain so far this wet season a totally different story here on the latest drought
02:59monitor that's not even highlighted but we're dealing with now a severe to extreme a drought
03:04situation across Los Angeles to San Diego remember in LA you have to go all the way back to April
03:10mid-April to get a quarter inch of rainfall so it just showcases how significant this drought
03:17this short-term dryness has been that has led to the elevated fire risk anytime the winds are gusty
03:23yeah you know John a couple of things though here comes our next storm and you and I were talking
03:27about this it's a difference of about 250 miles as that upper low comes south it's amazing and
03:34what kind of a difference that makes right if it is further east across Nevada that's when you get
03:38a lot of wind offshore wind to be generated but when the storm is off the coast the upper level
03:44drops off the coast and develops that way that allows all of that moist onshore flow
03:51increased relative humidities increased moisture and rain and mountain snow yeah and then we take
03:56a look really quickly here John I want to show you the rainfall amounts listen this isn't a big
04:01storm for this time of the year but it's the most impactful storm rain wise we've seen all winter in
04:08southern California and that's good news because it's coming at a right time we're looking for
04:13anywhere from perhaps around a half an inch in the LA basin an inch or perhaps two in some of
04:19the higher elevations there'll be some mountain snow here in as well so that is what we need
04:24right now to help the firefighters in some of these areas and of course there will be
04:29unfortunately a risk of some mud slides and some of the burn scar areas but I think overall the
04:36positives outweigh the negatives with this system gonna have to watch the flash flood
04:40warnings in those burn scar areas all right chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter John thanks for
04:45joining us here on AccuWeather Early.