The devastating wildfires sweeping across the Los Angeles area this week have been exacerbated by a cocktail of extreme weather conditions in southern California in recent years.
More than 2,000 buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands of acres have burned as unseasonal blazes rip through California in the middle of the state’s cool season.
The Palisades fire — which is still burning totally out of control — is now the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history after destroying hundreds of homes and exhausting the water supply.
So what is making these specific wildfires so dangerous?
What caused the Los Angeles wildfires?
While it’s not known exactly what caused the fires, there are several weather conditions that have enabled the blazes to spread so rapidly.
After experiencing the hottest summer on record, California has seen little reprieve this winter — receiving just 2 per cent of its normal rainfall to date.
The area has only received 6mm of rain since July, making it the second driest period in nearly 150 years.
In fact, Los Angeles hasn’t seen more than a quarter inch of rain since last April.
This means there is low humidity across the area and a significant amount of dry vegetation, resulting in conditions that the United States National Weather Service calls “about as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather”.
California’s fire season previously ran from May to October, but experts now consider the state to be at a fire risk year-round as temperatures rarely drop below 3 degrees even in the coldest part of the year.
“November, December, now January – there’s no fire season; it’s fire year,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
But if hot, dry conditions weren’t already bad enough, the situation is exacerbated by the dreaded Santa Ana winds.
The Santa Ana winds — also known as the ‘devil winds’ — usually occur between September and May, and bring hot, dry blasts of wind across California.
The winds originate in the Utah and Nevada deserts and can peak at 120km/hr, causing an extreme drop in humidity that adds to already dangerous fire conditions.
The winds last between one and seven days, and occur 10 to 25 times per year.
“I’ve fought fires during Santa Anas, and it’s scary because the fires run downhill just as fast as they do uphill,” the former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner Greg Mullins told the SMH.
“Those winds can be horrendous, and they are so dry that it does not matter if it is hot, you just get these incredible blast furnace fires.”
In addition to accelerating the spread of the fires, the Santa Ana winds have also made it near impossible for firefighters to get their air fleet off the ground as winds prove too dangerous to fly in.
The Santa Ana winds are expected to continue until at least January 14, while no significant rainfall is predicted in the area.
Lead image: Getty Images
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