The wildfires in California show no signs of slowing down
On Tuesday, Santa Claus Ana winds swept seaward across Southern California, scattering embers and then fanning the flames of a growing wildfire. Overnight, residents received urgent text message alerts warning of possible gusts of 100 miles per hour – a horrific escalation that turned a precarious situation into a full-blown crisis. As the winds howled, more embers flew into the air, igniting new fires in dry, brittle bushlands that had not seen significant rain in over eight months.
Los Angeles County, experiencing drought-like conditions, was a powder keg waiting for a spark. Firefighters faced an uphill battle against winds so fierce that planes that used to drop water and flame retardants were grounded. Officials warned in a news release Wednesday morning that “all Los Angeles County residents are at risk.” The evacuation orders have since displaced tens of thousands of residents, with thousands more awaiting updates. As of Wednesday evening, three major fires had burned over 13,000 acres, with containment efforts lagging: The Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, the Hurst Fire in Sylmar, and the Eaton Fire near Pasadena showed no signs at the time of writing 0 percent slowdown and are already the most destructive in California history.
It was because of the unusually dry and windy conditions that the fires quickly developed into a catastrophe: “Every little spark, whether from a lightning strike, a person or a campfire, will escalate quickly, quickly,” says Jennifer Marlon, scientist and lecturer the Yale University School of the Environment and the Yale Climate Change Communication Program. “Once a fire breaks out in these conditions, it’s very, very difficult to control it,” adds Kaitlyn Trudeau, senior research fellow for climate science at the nonprofit news organization Climate Central.
Wind events in Santa Ana are not uncommon. “We see it every year around this time,” said Jason Moreland, senior meteorologist at emergency communications platform AlertMedia. These downward winds, originating inland, are caused by a dry high pressure system from the northwest and a moist low pressure system from the south. “It’s like having a hose and folding it in half to cut off the water. If you poke a hole in the side, you’re under a lot of pressure to get out,” Trudeau explains. “That’s basically what happens to the air.”
However, these winds are much stronger than usual because the jet stream is descending near the Baja Peninsula in northwestern Mexico, Moreland explains. Winds that normally shift to higher elevations reach lower areas. “We experience wind events of this magnitude every few decades,” he says.
While this wind event seems extreme, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor and senior fellow at Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environmentexplained that this may just be due to natural weather fluctuations – and more research is needed to find out whether it is caused by climate change.
Although the winds are not unusual for the time of year, climate change is changing increases the risk of late or early season wildfires in California. “This is not only a particularly strong wind event, but also a particularly dry time of year here in early January,” says Diffenbaugh. Southern California’s rainy season, which runs from October to April, saw record rainfall following one of the driest rainfall periods on record. What precipitation is like more variable due to climate changethe overlap between the wind season and the dry season increases. “We are seeing significantly more hot, dry, windy days, particularly in Southern California,” Trudeau said.
