Santa Ana winds are on track to begin picking up around Southern California early Thursday and will pose an elevated fire risk to the region until Saturday, meteorologists say.
Moderate strength wind gusts are expected to affect the inland areas of Orange County as well as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said Bruno Rodriguez, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. He said that urban areas can expect gusts of up to 30 to 40 mph while areas near canyons and passes can anticipate 60 mph gusts.
Remote mountain areas can expect gusts up to 70 mph as well, he said.
“We’re still going to be looking at elevated to near-critical fire weather,” Rodriguez said.
Strong Santa Ana winds will develop tonight, with the strongest winds occurring Thu morning. Critical fire weather conditions are likely as winds combine with extremely low relative humidity. Extremely critical fire weather conditions for the San Diego County mountains on Thu. pic.twitter.com/MyLVHZWMa1
— NWS San Diego (@NWSSanDiego) December 2, 2020
A red flag warning was announced for inland Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties from Wednesday at 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. Saturday. Another warning will be in effect at the same time for much of Los Angeles County and is expected to remain until 6 p.m. on Friday, except for the Santa Clarita Valley where it continues until 10 p.m. Saturday, according to Kristen Stewart, meteorologist for NWS Los Angeles.
“Depending on where, the mountains in the Santa Clarita Valley can expect 55 to 70 mph wind gusts (Wednesday night) into Thursday night with gusts up to 50 mph,” Stewart said. “The Santa Clarita Valley is going to be the biggest concern (for fire danger).”
Both meteorologists said that winds can be expected to begin tapering off after mid-day on Thursday but will likely be prevalent through Friday into Saturday.
Stewart also said that the hills around the central and western part of the San Fernando Valley can expect wind gusts 50 to 60 mph. Additionally, parts of the San Gabriel Valley, Malibu and the Hollywood Hills may see wind gusts up to 45 mph, she said.
An upper-level low pressure system on Wednesday was sitting directly east of the region near the Arizona border, which will favor the wind conditions slightly locally, Rodriguez and Stewart said. Rodriguez said the system is funneling winds more towards San Diego County, creating an opposite effect of Thanksgiving’s Santa Ana winds that more impacted Orange County.
However, there a decent chance there won’t be much of a break from the Santa Ana winds for the Southern California region. Rodriguez said there’s the potential for additional winds to impact the region as soon as Monday and Tuesday.
“There’s still a lot of uncertainty and a lot can change this far out,” Rodriguez said. “It’s going to be very dry and we could have weak Santa Ana winds at least, potentially moderate.”
