Rain is only a break from LA wildfire danger: 'Keep things down for a week'
Rain is only a break from LA wildfire danger: 'Keep things down for a week'
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Los Angeles fire officials fielded questions, concerns in town hall
Emotions ran high inside a packed theater in Malibu, California, as Palisades Fire victims had a chance to press officials.
As the weather system that finally brought substantial rain to Southern California moves slowly east, battle-scarred residents may be wondering how long they're safe from the kind of wildfires that have ravaged Los Angeles County neighborhoods this month.
The approximate answer: Maybe a week?
That doesn't mean such devastating infernos will return in early February, only that the weekend's precipitation wasn't strong enough to fully soak the drought-stricken region and eliminate fire danger.
The National Weather Service said three-day rainfall totals reached 2.23 inches in one Santa Barbara County location, but most were closer to 1 inch in the coastal and mountain areas of Los Angeles County. It was a bit less in Ventura County to the northwest. That still helped firefighters increase containment percentages to the mid-to-high 90s in the Palisades, Eaton and Hughes fires.
'They need multiple systems to come down there. Given that the area is in a severe-to-extreme drought, (the weekend rain) is not going to eliminate the drought," AccuWeather meteorologist Alex DaSilva said. "This might keep things down for a week or so. They didn't get an extreme amount of rain. It will help to douse the fires, but in a week or so it's just going to be dry again.''
DaSilva does not foresee any more rainfall in Southern California until possibly the end of the first week of February, which raises concerns that new fires could ignite, perhaps through human behavior like tossing out a lit cigarette or failing to completely put out a campfire.
The good news: The warm, dry Santa Ana winds that fueled the blazes, particularly the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires that sparked Jan. 7, are nowhere in sight for at least 10 days, DaSilva said.
A report by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety called the conditions for the spread of those initial fires 'a textbook-worst case conflagration scenario,'' pointing out that, 'historically, wildfire-driven suburban conflagrations follow humans, drought, and wind.'' All three were present Jan. 7.
Absent the Santa Ana winds, the immediate future looks more encouraging. But they typically run from September to May and could become a factor again unless more rain brings to an end a fire season now on extra innings. It usually doesn't stretch into January.
Conditions similar to a La Niña pattern, which keeps storms from reaching Southern California, have been at play this winter. They have been changing of late and figure to allow rainmakers into Northern California as soon as this coming weekend. But it doesn't appear they will reach the southern part of the state, which stands to benefit from more precipitation.
'If it's a wet winter, it doesn't really matter if there are Santa Anas,'' DaSilva said. 'If the ground is wet, it's not really an issue. But if it's dry, that's when it could be a problem.''
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