A look at how intense gusts rarely before seen in Southern California stoked blazes in urban areas in and around Los Angeles.
Los Angeles has experienced one of its worst disasters as powerful Santa Ana winds, sometimes at hurricane strength, swept down the surrounding mountains and pushed wildfires into several neighborhoods starting Tuesday.Jon Keeley, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and adjunct professor at UCLA, explained via UCLA’s The Conversation what causes extreme winds like this in Southern California, and why they create such fire risk.
“These strong, dry winds are often around 30 to 40 mph. But they can be stronger. The winds in early January were reported to have reached 60 to 70 mph.”“My colleagues and I recently published a paper comparing 71 years of Santa Ana wind events, starting in 1948. We found about the same amount of overall Santa Ana wind activity, but the timing is shifting from fewer events in September and more in December and January.
“More people now live in and at the edges of wildland areas, and the power grid has expanded with them. That creates more opportunities for fires to start. In extreme weather, power lines face a higher risk of falling or being hit by tree branches and sparking a fire.”This 3D map from Cal Fire provides an idea of the steepness of the terrain for the largest of the L.A.-area blazes, the Palisades fire. As of Friday it had burned more than 20,000 acres.
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