Last year the thread didn’t start until June.
Some trees and vegetation at the Getty Villa Museum have burned, but so far staff and the collection remain safe.
Not really a ‘new’ season as much as a continuation of 2024. The dry vegetation—ground cover has grown extensively over the last couple of comparatively wet years but has dried up with the negligible precipitation since the beginning of the ‘water year’ in October—is primed for rapid fire, and the near-record Santa Ana winds from an offshore wind event are stoking even the smallest ground fire into a rapids\ly spreading conflagration.
2023 and 2024 were successively record ‘warm’ years, and projections on 2025 (which by normal patterns ‘should be’ a cooling La Niña are shaping up to be hot and dry for the North American Southwest with much of Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico reentering or remaining in drought.
This is the ‘new normal’ (for what passes for normal) although temperatures will keep rising because we’re not doing anything to abate atmospheric heat retention and the Pacific Ocean, which normally acts as a heat sink is thermally saturated and rejecting heat at previously unobserved rates, and the moderating influence of the cryosphere continues to be retarded as ice shelves and icepacks shrink.
Stranger
Chad Meyers is reporting easterly winds coming in from the Great Basin. But, same effect. We had some decent Sierra Crest winds today. Closed a lot of skiing down.
Oh my God, my sister and her family were ordered to evacuate, they are right by the Eaton Canyon fire.
All of eastern Altadena is under Level 3 Evac Order, and even the neighborhoods east of N Lake and north of the 210 are at a Level 2 Evac Warning. I don’t think that happened even back in 2011.
Pasadena School District is closed for tomorrow. I don’t know the last time that happened.
Stranger
One thing that’s making it worse is that we have had almost no rain this season. Normally, we will start to get a bit of rain in October and from there it increases with December through March as the months with the most rain. By this time of the rainy season we should have had about 2 - 3 inches but instead we have received a tenth of an inch or less.
Stranger
Just to clarify for the non-Californians peaking in who might feel confused, CA weather this season has been spectacularly bipolar. Northern CA has been fairly wet with some record-breaking rain days in certain cities. Southern CA has been potentially record-breaking bone dry.
SF and north is fine. Central CA and south is very much not.
I’ve been following this off and on all day and man, it’s looking ugly and looks to get uglier overnight. Best to Eyebrows_0f_Doom’s family and all the rest of you that might be in the path. If you’re under any kind of even mild evac threat and have limited access roads I’d probably bug out pre-emptively before said roads get a chance to become hopelessly grid-locked a la Pacific Palisades earlier today.
The Eaton Fire (near @Eyebrows_0f_Doom’s sister) has blown up over night, Palisades has expanded almost all the way to Malibu Beach on the west and well into Santa Monica on the south east, with spot fires showing all the way down to Olympic Blvd, and several new, so far smaller fires developing overnight in San Fernando Valley, along the San Gabriel foothills, and spotting in the Torrance/Carson/Palos Verdes/Long Beach area
Stranger
My sister, her husband, my nephews and their dog evacuated to the in-laws home in South Pasadena, but this is apocalyptic. This is so scary. These spot fires from flying embers are just burning homes everywhere so they have no idea what is going on with their home.
I am so glad to hear they are safe.
Friends of ours have a house on a hill just off of Tuna Canyon. For reference that’s just two canyons west of Pacific Palisades. The fire came through their canyon last night, but they were fortunate in that they were able to build a new home with fire in mind. It’s an all concrete structure that I think has the ability to pool water on the roof. As of this morning, all of the vegetation on their property burned as well as whatever stuff they still had outside, but the house is there and secure.
I know a lot of their neighbors and other folks we know down there are nowhere near as lucky. Our friend said that Pacific Coast Highway is just going to look apocalyptic when this is all said and done because in her words “all the structures down there burned.”
Here in the South Bay, it was a windy, dry night and an eerie overcast morning with bits of ash on outside surfaces, along with the smell of smoke.
For those with little knowledge of the locations we are talking about, here is the Cal Fire map of active fires.
My kids are at home because school closed yesterday due to high winds and power outages, and today because of high winds with smoke and ash. Spouse is also home because of work is in an evacuation zone. I’m at work, but driving through high winds carrying smoke and ash is not great. Amazingly, pretty much all drivers were staying under the speed limit.
We haven’t had to evacuate and, at the moment, we’re not in the path, but the situation is changing rapidly. Daughter’s boyfriend’s family did have to evacuate.
Note that those are just CALFIRE incidents (those requiring state response coordination because they cross fire districts); there are a bunch of fires that aren’t even shown on that map, such as the Olivas Fire (2 acres reported but in a high wind region just inland from the coast) in Oxnard and an as-yet unnamed fire to the west of the Rose Bowl pushing into the Upper Glendale region adjacent to Eagle Rock.
There is a tendency to dismiss the emergency of fires in Southern California because they happen with such frequency but the extent and speed at which these fires have spread is unprecedented. @Eyebrows_0f_Doom’s descriptor of “apocalyptic” is not hyperbolic. And given the predicted dryness and above average temperatures for 2025 are probably just a harbinger for things to come.
Stranger
I have a cousin in Sherman Oaks which is not an evacuation zone at the moment. Still, it looks too close to the Palisades fire for my comfort. Last night she said she was good but there were really high winds. I messaged her a short time ago so still waiting to hear what her status is at the moment. She had lost power but has battery backups for her phone.
Watching reporting on the Los Angeles fires, how totally out of control they are, how swiftly they’re moving on the furious wind, and I can’t help wondering: What if one of them progresses into the heart of the city?
Am I just catastrophizing? Or is this actually possible?
Los Angeles doesn’t have a heart so much as metastasized suburbs. Development varies from low to medium to high across the whole area with many urban centers.
And it’s definitely within the realm of possibility for wildfire to reach far into the city. All of the county’s fire departments are supplying resources to the directly impacted areas, because each fire threatens everyone.
It is not impossible for fires to threaten the urban metro region because as much as Los Angeles is a developed sprawl, it is interspaced with wilderness areas such as Griffith Park, Ascot Hills, and the Hollywood Hills leading back over to Topanga Canyon and Santa Monica Mountains. That Santa Monica and Brentwood are being evacuated is clear evidence that being in an “urban” area does not ensure safety. That being said, these fires are not currently threatening the Hollywood, Koreatown, Los Feliz/Silver Lake, or downtown LA and points south. Altadena and Pasadena are uniquely threatened because on the north (and west for Pasadena) are basically in the foothills of chaparral-covered mountains where wind-blown fires can advance faster than you can run.
But we’re not under existential threat right now, and it looks like the winds are set to abate this afternoon, so hopefully the state can bring in air suppression and contain these fires, although as big as these are they are going to mostly have to exhaust themselves. I’m cringing at the thought of what Altadena is going to look like because I have visions of entire neighborhoods reduced to ash, but maybe it won’t be that bad.
Stranger
Short answer: Los Angeles has no heart
Longer answer: “Los Angeles” is really spread out. For the current fires, Pasadena and Santa Monica need t be nervous, but it is almost impossible to see a way for the fires to make their way to downtown (as close to a heart as anywhere in LA) without any desnes forested areas to feed them.