AccuWeather California Expert Ken Clark speaks on how the Santa Ana winds create dry and windy conditions and bring elevated fire danger around Southern California.
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00:00All right, so joining us right now is that you know the California expert Ken Clark
00:03So Ken we've been talking about the fire danger and just how bad it's been here for the past couple of days
00:07But today actually stands out more than the other so tell us why
00:12Well, we have another situation
00:14We have a high pressure gonna be building into the Great Basin and this is going to cause another period of very windy weather
00:20As we go through starting this afternoon, but really ramping up for tonight into tomorrow morning
00:26That's when the strongest winds will be we have had very little rain in Southern, California this rainfall season so far
00:32In fact, there's some as low as 2% of normal rainfall for this time of year
00:37So we have a combination of the strong winds we have
00:42Temperatures gonna be rising to as much as 15 degrees above normal and the air is going to become very dry
00:47The fuels are there. So we again have a real high fire danger across portions of Southern, California
00:54Over the next 24 to 48 hours
00:56Yes, so it's going to be dry. It's going to be windy here with those conditions here setting up for us
01:01And it's been the Franklin fire
01:02That's been the one that's been primarily making the headlines here as far as the fires across Southern, California
01:07So give us a little bit of an update on what we're seeing there
01:11well, the conditions greatly improved since the greatest part of the fire last week and
01:17You know that that situation is pretty much under control at this point. However
01:22This while this event is not this wind event is not going to be as strong as the Franklin fire time
01:28This is going to be strong enough that any spark will cause a fire and that fire will spread rapidly
01:35So it's well, maybe not as strong of an event coming up here that caused the Franklin fire
01:40We still have a very very high danger that if a fire does develop it will move quite rapidly
01:46Alright, so give us some tips that some of our viewers might need to know here if they are going to be in Southern, California
01:52Of what are some tips to remember to help mitigate the fire risk?
01:57Well, most people have already live in Southern, California and live in the fire danger areas have cleared the brush away from their homes and stuff like that
02:04So that's you know been accomplished for the most part
02:07This is kind of late in the season now for this kind of a big fire event or fire possibilities at least
02:13Now what you should do is be very cautious of any outdoor flames
02:18cigarettes
02:20Even your car parking your car on the side of the road
02:23On top of dry grass your catalytic converter can actually start a fire
02:28And that's how some fires have actually started some big fires have started from cars that have caused
02:35The brush to catch on fire as they pulled over to the side of the road
02:38Yeah, we're going to be watching this very carefully here as we head throughout this afternoon this evening and into the weekend because we will be
02:43Tracking more dry and more windy conditions here, especially across Southern, California
02:47Accuweather, California expert, Clint Clark, Ken Clark. Thank you so much for joining us
02:52You're very welcome, David