Southern Californians should prepare for unseasonably warm temperatures and gusts of hot, dry wind beginning this weekend and leading into next week – conditions that could fuel any wildfire that breaks out in the region, fire and weather officials said.
Starting Saturday, Jan. 27, warm Santa Ana winds are expected to course through, with coastal regions seeing gusts of between 20 and 30 mph. Inland regions are expected to see gusts of 40-50 mph, said Dan Gregoria, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“Those offshore Santa Ana winds really dry out the atmosphere,” Gregoria said. “It’s going to be dry and really warm with some strong wind gusts for the inland areas.”
Temperatures will pick up starting Saturday with Riverside seeing a high of 75 degrees, then an uptick to 83 on Sunday and getting even warmer on Monday. Anaheim will see a high of 79 degrees on Saturday and 87 on Sunday and Monday.
Along the coast, temperatures will be slightly cooler. Newport Beach should see 72 degrees on Saturday and 80 on Sunday. In the South Bay, at Los Angeles International Airport and in Torrance, the temperature will reach the low 80s on Sunday.
“From (Thursday), that’s a 15-20 degree jump, a really big warm-up,” Gregoria said.
Pleasantly sunny, yes, but this weather will bring low humidity, making for ideal — and troubling — wildfire conditions.
“The brush is still dry out there, and we haven’t had enough precipitation for there to be any greening in the hills,” said Capt. Larry Kurtz of the Orange County Fire Authority. “Last year, we had tremendous rains and what it did was it helped our drought situation. It also grew a huge grass crop in the hills.
“This grass crop is one of the first things to dry out when the rain stops,” he added. “We have a huge amount of light-flash fuels in the hills. It’s what we call in the fire business ‘receptive fuel bed’ — it doesn’t take much for them to catch fire.”
Southern California is enduring what should be one of the wettest months of the year but instead has seen very little precipitation – extending the fire season.
“Unfortunately, there is no rain in sight, even though it cools a little midweek the dominant feature is the ridge of high pressure,” Gregoria said. “Not a good weather pattern for the state.”
[contf] [contfnew] 
daily news
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
