Although Santa Ana winds have weakened, Ken Clark has warned they are expected to continue. The fire risk at Southern California remains with lingering dry weather as of Jan. 21.
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00:00Unfortunately, Ken, you know, over the last couple of years, Ken, I think we really got
00:05lucky that we weren't dealing with many Santa Ana winds.
00:09We were dealing with lots of rain.
00:11Now that caused problems too, but we didn't have much of a fire situation, but certainly
00:16things have changed this year as we've seen Santa Ana wind, Santa Ana wind, Santa Ana
00:21wind event, event, and event time and time again.
00:25And we're still dealing with some winds here this morning with a high fire danger.
00:30We have a high fire danger now, it's going to stay with it probably right on through
00:33Thursday at this point, maybe Friday morning as well.
00:35Then a big change, but that in a bit.
00:38Right now winds are starting to come down.
00:40We're not seeing the 70, 80 mile per hour winds we saw yesterday into last night.
00:44We're seeing 50s in the mountains.
00:46That's down quite a bit from yesterday and last night, and we are expecting winds to
00:50continue to drop off as we go through today.
00:54Not that there won't be some pretty good breezes still, especially in the mountains and the
00:57higher valleys, but it will not be as windy as it has been.
01:01You know, Ken, I called this up this morning and to me this was stunning.
01:06They'll see these dew point temperatures in Avalon, the island of Avalon, 12 degree dew
01:12point.
01:13Ken, do you remember a time you've seen these dew points this low?
01:17It's been a while, that's for certain.
01:19And I got an even better one than that.
01:20Okay.
01:21Mountain sensor in the St. Gabriel mountains this morning, the dew point is negative minus
01:2628.
01:27The dew point.
01:29So it's dry.
01:30And you know, it's interesting because we don't have a long term drought going in California.
01:34We talked about this, that in the long term, there would be no drought in California through
01:40the winter of 2025 and even into 2026.
01:44But in the short term, it hasn't rained in a while.
01:47And unfortunately, with all this cold, they're dumping into the east.
01:51These little impulses come down from the north, what we call those inside sliders.
01:56And that's what continues to drive the wind.
01:58Now, we don't have anything like that Wednesday, Thursday, but with the high pressure building
02:02in the Great Basin, that creates a problem.
02:05Yeah, winds are going to come back up some again as we get into Wednesday, especially
02:09Wednesday night into Thursday, maybe by the morning.
02:13Nothing like we just saw, but it will continue the fire danger in California.
02:17Really quickly, Ken, and we don't have much time here.
02:20There's the fire risk.
02:21But this upper low coming, well, I have the wrong graphic.
02:25We do have a pattern change coming for the weekend.
02:28Five seconds.
02:29What are we expecting?
02:30Showers this weekend, especially Saturday and Sunday, lower snow levels, colder temperatures.
02:36California expert Ken Clark, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.