Santa Ana winds continue; fire risks remain in Southern California

AccuWeather

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.

Transcript

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.

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