Southern California started to slowly cool off Tuesday after days of mercilessly hot weather. The moderating temperatures — in the 90s after a brutal heat wave had pushed temperatures as high as 110 degrees — aided firefighting efforts.
Conditions will be even better for fire control by Thursday, when even lower temperatures and higher humidity levels could help control several fast-moving blazes in the forests outside of Los Angeles. That includes a large fire in the San Bernardino Mountains, where 65,000 structures are threatened and thousands of people have been evacuated.
Still, the risks aren’t over. The improved weather conditions stem from a low-pressure system that will first bring a drop in humidity and wind gusts of up to 25 miles per hour over the next day or so, said Casey Oswalt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s San Diego office.
The system, which will ultimately result in below-average temperatures for much of Southern California next week, “at least initially will bring an uptick in stronger winds, which are not ideal for firefighting conditions,” Ms. Oswalt said. Those winds could also make new wildfires more likely to erupt and spread.
The dangerous fire conditions are expected to continue through Wednesday evening.
Regardless, firefighters were grateful to fight the Southern California blazes in temperatures 5 to 10 degrees lower than on Monday. Cooler temperatures not only reduce dangerous fire behavior, but also allow firefighters to work for longer stretches of time, said Rick Carhart, a spokesman for Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.
“When a firefighter is out there and dressed in all of their gear and 60 pounds of stuff on their back and it’s 110 degrees, it makes it really hard to work,” said Mr. Carhart, who was assigned to the fire in the San Bernardino Mountains, known as the Line fire.
So even though the high on Tuesday was expected to be 101 degrees, he said, “Boy does that feel good when yesterday was 112.”
Still, the winds on Tuesday were pushing the Line fire northeast toward the Big Bear area, known for its vacation homes and ski resorts. Officials issued evacuation warnings for much of the area.
The same winds were blowing the Airport fire, which broke out yesterday in the hills of eastern Orange County, into a less populated part of Riverside County, said Steve Concialdi with the county’s fire authority.
Next week, the California coast could get a surprising weather shift after so much dry heat: rain. Forecasting models suggest a strong possibility of at least a drizzle early next week, said Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.
“That would certainly be welcome, to help with the dry conditions,” he said.
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