Many have been watching the devastation of the fires that have overtaken many neighbourhoods throughout the Los Angeles area reminding Albertans of Fort McMurray and Jasper.
To put a perspective on the situation, we reached out to our weather specialist Brandon Houck to explain the weather systems that created the “perfect storm”. “This is something kind of similar to ‘Chinooks’ and they are called the ‘Santa Ana Winds’ that occur in Southern California. What we had set up this week was an area of low pressure in Northern Mexico along with an area of high pressure situated over us. Both of these two systems, they don’t really get along. We have a very strong gradient flow that came right out of the mountains, an east to west flow, and this is very dry and warm air. That allowed for winds to gust from 100 to 125 kilometres per hour and relative humidity at almost zero.”
Drumheller Fire Chief Derian Rosario provides insight on why the fire moved so fast through the area. “They are getting winds in excess of 100 miles per hour and that would just drive a fire, especially in the dry fuels, it would just race across. It would be very difficult for those firefighters to get ahead of it, even with air support, to knock all that down and hold it.”
Another big factor in the spread of the fire was the ash, or embers, that would spark new fires admits Rosario. “What will happen in a fire, you’ll get ash or embers. In the fire service we call the fire service we call them fire brands. Those fire brands can travel great distances and can start spot fires miles away from where the initial fire was. That is probably, more than likely, how they got up to six or seven big fire levels because of fire brands moving through the valleys.”
To bring it to a local perspective, a situation like this would be unlikely this time of year but in the dry portion of the summer, it could happen. “When we put on a fire ban because we have the potential for large fires, nothing on the scale of what we are seeing in Los Angeles, but we have very dry conditions, we have a lot of fine cured fuels, hot temperatures, and those fires can progress very quickly,” shares Rosario.
Conditions weather-wise in the Los Angeles area is improving according to Brandon Houck. “The good news is that the winds have finally settled down so that means that they can finally get a handle on the fires but there is no sign of any rain at all for the next week or beyond. It is going to take some time to get these fires out.”
As of Thursday, January 9th, there are five fires in the Los Angeles area, including one in the Hollywood Hills. So far more than 45 square miles have been scorched and over 179,000 people are under evacuation. There are over 1,400 firefighters battling the fires and all off duty firefighters in Los Angeles County have been asked to help.
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