Fires continue popping up in Southern California, but welcome rain on the way

AccuWeather

Through Friday, you can expect dangerous winds to accelerate any fires that spark in Southern California, but this weekend, the weather may provide some help.

Transcript

00:00Thank you other California expert Ken Clark joins us with the latest on the

00:03situation this evening. Thanks for being with us Ken. Sure. Ken we've been looking

00:08at the big picture. There's a fast-moving big fire right now in the

00:12northern Baja California Peninsula south of the border but we're a little more

00:16concerned just selfishly for our viewers sake what's going on in Southern

00:21California. So could you give us an update on the situation here near

00:25Castaic Lake. That huge fire is a better contained right now a 24% contained as

00:31a last update that's considerable improvement from last night about 10%

00:36more containment doing really well in that a lot of little spot fires around

00:39Southern California. One in the Seal Beach area, one developed recently in the

00:44last hour up the I-15 corridor at the Cajon Pass. These are being attended to

00:50really quickly by firefighters as well. These crews have been doing an amazing

00:54job over the last 24 hours first stopping the Hughes fire and stopping

00:59several smaller fires from getting out of hand. Yeah it seems like really since

01:04we've had these Santa Ana wind events after the Palisades and Eaton fires

01:08fire crews have been great about getting any fire that pops up getting that

01:11contained quickly. Of course with the Hughes fire we do have some good news

01:17insight that will help firefighters even more this weekend. That's right we have

01:21some big change in the weather coming up as we get into the weekend. Fire

01:25conditions will still be very bad through tomorrow morning but the winds

01:29will be gradually dying down tonight. The good news is we have rain on the way. We

01:33have even snow on the way for the mountains and a big change to much

01:37chillier temperatures. And Ken some of the issues that we may face with a more

01:43meaningful rain event here is we're just kind of taking you through the next

01:46couple of days here through tonight and tomorrow morning when the fire danger

01:49drops off. As you mentioned the rain rolls in. Do we expect to see many debris

01:54flows and mudslides? There's been a general trend upward with the amount of

01:58rain that we could see with this. There has been and the reason for that is this

02:02low that's coming down is going to stay part right near the coast of Central

02:05California and that's going to allow more moisture to come underneath of it

02:09off the Pacific into Southern California. There'll be far more rain in Southern

02:13California and there will be up in Central California with this. So we're

02:16looking for maybe generally a half to an inch of rainfall. Greatest amounts

02:20inland valleys and on the coastal slopes. We could be looking at some very heavy

02:25downpours in some of these showers because the cold nature of this storm

02:28these are be convective showers maybe in a thunderstorm or two around and that's

02:32the danger when we're looking at possible debris flows mudslides

02:36everything else we have all that ash out there as well. So people in the in around

02:42those burn areas need to be prepared for evacuation orders from that if they

02:48start to occur. And it seems anybody just below Altadena is in a very precarious

02:53space for debris that may come running down the road and so forth. We're even

02:57reading reports they're putting concrete structures almost to build a skeletal

03:01system around some areas where there might be maybe big things that could

03:05flow southward. Yeah. Oh they've done that in the past. Yeah. Okay.

03:11Interesting. Well Ken we always appreciate your insight there. You are

03:14the man when it comes to the California weather from Rancho Cucamonga, California

03:17longtime AccuWeather California expert Ken Clark. Thank you Jeff. All right

03:23thanks Ken.

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