October is typically the peak of Southern California’s fire season, when Santa Ana winds paired with dry conditions after summer allow flames to explode into major brush fires.
But this year, the region was hit by an early atmospheric river rain storm that left the landscape drenched.
And that could be good news on the fire front — at least for a while.
The storm, classified as a weak, or Level 1, atmospheric river brought enough moisture to Southern California’s drought-stricken landscape to delay fire season for weeks, if not months, said Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“In a way this is like a Goldilocks atmospheric river,” Ralph said. “It’s sort of just right to be mostly beneficial at this stage of the year.”
Southern California has endured more than a year of intensely dry conditions, so much so that hurricane strength winds in January fueled two massive fires that destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena.
One storm isn’t enough to change those fortunes, but Ralph says it will help. The storm dumped more than two inches of rain at UCLA, not far from the Palisades burn zone and 1.27 inches in downtown Los Angeles as of 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Trees, grasses and plants that make up Southern California’s natural landscape will absorb a lot of moisture from the rain, making them less primed to burn — at least for a while.
“It doesn’t take very many AR storms to really help us have a normal water year and recover from drought,” Ralph said. “This is starting the season off on a favorable foot.”
If another storm arrives in the next few weeks it could stave off the wildfire season even further, Ralph said. But if the rest of the fall season is dry and Santa Ana winds kick up, that brush could dry out again, raising concerns about fires.
2025 had been shaping up to be a major fire year, driven by the L.A. firestorms but also blazes this summer and fall.
As of mid-July, California has seen more than 220,000 acres burn this year, almost 100,000 acres more than the state had seen on average at this point in the year over the last five years, according to statistics from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection that include data from both state and federal lands. But even without those unprecedented January fires — the Palisades, Eaton and Hughes — this year would still outpace the five-year average as of July 2025.
There have not been any massive fires in Southern California so far this fall.
The post Rare October rains could push back L.A. fire season — but only so much appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
