Santa Anas and the wildfire situation

Brian Stertz

Brian Stertz

EF5
Joined
Nov 28, 2005
Messages
1,054
Location
Overland Park KS
Looks like things are getting worse and times may be on the way to becoming even worse as the Santa Ana blowtorch continues. Hopefully no chasers are having to contend with this nasty blaze. One of my co-workers just returned from a business trip and was just amazed how much ground is on fire which he saw from the plane window. Prayers out for those folks. Pretty scary stuff.
 
This is the worst I can remember in many, many years. We have fires going across a wide swath of the Southland-- from Santa Barbara County all the way down to the Mexican border-- with some major population centers threatened. A whopping 250,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, and Southern California emergency resources are maxed out. They're having to let houses burn because they can't get to them all.

In the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills part of the L.A. metroplex, however, it's dead calm-- weirdly so. We've had no Santa Ana action since Saturday night-- but the sky is yellow and hazy.

My sister, who lives in Malibu, was evacuated.
 
You guys should look at the incredible visible satellite loop out there right now. Smoke going WAY out into the Pacific.
 

Attachments

  • southwest-vis.jpg
    southwest-vis.jpg
    15.7 KB · Views: 82
most, if not all those fires are arson-related
Click to expand...
The Orange County fire is reported as most likely arson and there may be others. However, more frequent causes are powerlines whipping into each other or getting blown down during the 60-80 mph wind gusts in the foothills, and maybe some human carelessness such as driving around in bone-dry brush, cigarette butts, etc.

It seems every few years we get a widespread outbreak like this one. Even when the area was just inhabited by native tribes, there were reports of smoky skies from wildfires. It's part of the natural process, caused back then by lightning-struck trees smoldering until the Santa Anas arrived. Since around 1900, fire suppression and widespread homebuilding in the foothills has put people tragically in the path of these massive events.
 
Our state resources are nearly tapped out and we've had to go to NV and AZ for help. For a state as large and rich as CA to have to get help from neighboring states strikes me as pretty serious.
 
You know I saw a story that kinda pissed me off. I had watched one story talking about how they just don't have enough equipment and personnel to fight all the house fires they have.

Then I saw a story about how some castle that had some Elvis memorabilia and some other collectible stuff in it and it was talking about how the firefighters sifted through looking for what might have survived.

You know, I realize that stuff was worth a fortune, but it just seemed to me those guys could have been off fighting one of the other house fires instead of sifting through looking for Elvis crap. Priorities people?
 
Well aware of the feeling there David but from what I recall from when the fire happened in Los Alamos, it wouldn't matter if you had an infinite amount of firefighters. Its just more people that have to get out of the way. Since they can't really fight the fires when they get going like this, they're either reduced to watching or running away so they don't get hurt.
 
So your saying they had nothing more productive to do than sift through debris looking for memorabilia during this huge fire outbreak? Don't get me wrong, I was a firefighter once, and I am all for helping someone where you can, but you have to prioritize you incidents. I would think given the situation that would come low on the list. Unless of course the person that owned it was worth a few billion. :rolleyes:
 
It was a scramble and a half just to get out of Southern California Saturday Evening. I spent a week in Orange County with family and was part of a wedding Saturday Afternoon. There was word that the Santa Ana Winds could be severe for my drive to Vegas with winds from 50-100mph. The drive up the 15north was okay till we passed the Victorville area, by that time it was dark out and basically a dust storm all the way to vegas. When I left Southern California there were no fires, When I got to Vegas there was over 6 fires with most of them out of control. Im guessing that winds gusted to near 60mph for the drive to Las Vegas which moved the van all over the highway with a Luggage Container up top.

I am now home in Idaho and have been since last night. It is absolutely shocking about how many fires are raging and how many are suspected as arson which is usually the case for California fires. After talking to Several family members from Orange County the word is that the air is intolerable with heavy smoke and at night the Flames are visible from many miles away.

My Cousin who got married over the weekend was spending her honeymoon in Lake Arrowhead today and after a Voluntary evacuation order she and her Husband left the area after they went for a lunch and realized the whole town was a ghost town with most or all residents already out of the area. Quite an eerie story, but now I can rest safe as she is home now away from the fires and resting. I'm gonna go watch CNN now and see whats going on with these fires. What a mess...

-gerrit
 
This is probably the best imagery I've seen... I pulled these off the Terra archives earlier this evening.

fire-lax.jpg

Los Angeles area


fire-san.jpg

San Diego area
Check out the gravity waves (or K-H waves?) on the top of the smoke out at sea


Interestingly further south I saw long dust streamers coming off Baja California... they're evidently getting the full brunt of the winds, but no fires. It kind of illustrates to what extent these fires are intertwined with human population.

Tim
 
This may be the result of incorrect media reports but the one thing that stands out for me is the number of wholescale evacuations.

Up until a few years ago that was pretty much the norm here too, but now the overwhelming opinion is stay with your home -but only if prepared.

http://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/page.php?id=317

People that stay with their home have a much better chance of combating the spot fires before and after the fire front. As the fire front passes you take shelter inside your house.
 
Looks like the winds should peak sometime later this morning, then slowly diminish throughout the day as offshore gradients finally start to relax. The onshore gradient has slightly increased this morning in the south coast area, which is a good sign. But even after the winds weaken, the overnight RH recoveries are still very poor, so hopefully this progged cutoff low will help later this week. Each GFS run has pushed it farther and farther offshore.

Some of our co-workers at the San Diego air pollution control district had to be evacuated yesterday...their power was going in and out during our conference call.
 
Another item of good news... the NWS WFO in San Diego is back and operational this morning after they had to evacuate yesterday morning. Kudos to the LA/Oxnard office for backing them up seamlessly, especially with keeping all the warnings updated.

If I remember right, the upper air observing site in the San Diego area, KNKX was damaged (if not destroyed?) in a fire a few years ago.

Air quality across most of SoCal has been atrocious with the smoke plumes. This is discussed further on Jeff Masters' blog...

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=835&tstamp=200710

With the winds relaxing during the next few days, hopefully we'll see the firefighters make some more headway. I grew up in the area and I still have some family and many friends there. We're all hoping for the best.
 
Michael Thompson said:
People that stay with their home have a much better chance of combating the spot fires before and after the fire front. As the fire front passes you take shelter inside your house.
Click to expand...

I think that's highly dependent on where you live. In the middle of a pine forest in Colorado or grassy plains in Texas. I wouldn't want to be fighting spot fires with bone dry, 100 ft pine matchsticks all around me.

Another problem is water supply. Its going to be highly depleted to non-existent during a big fire. And your fire hose (garden spigot) will likely run dry when you need it most.

I think somebody mentioned arson as a major cause of these fires. I don't doubt that, but I heard that the wind is knocking down power lines or creating arcs that are causing many of these fires.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top