Updated Friday, January 10 –
Fire officials in Southern California are investigating the causes of several wildfires that have destroyed homes and businesses primarily located in Los Angeles County.
The initial blaze—The Palisades Fire—was reported at 10:30AM Tuesday and has scorched thousands of acres in and around the beach towns of Santa Monica and Malibu. This fire was preceded by an Extreme Warning from the National Weather Service in Los Angeles as early as Thursday, January 2, which warned of “a particularly dangerous situation – in other words this is as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather.”
The Weather Service then forecast winds blowing to 100MPH.
The naturally occurring atmospheric scenario responsible for this event has nothing to do with so-called “global warming” or “climate change.”
The conditions are meteorologically referred to as “downslope” winds. In the Los Angeles region they are known as “Santa Ana Winds” and blow from land to sea, across the Santa Ana mountains (5600’) on the eastern edges of the Los Angeles and into the Pacific Ocean. As the winds sweep down the mountainside they naturally warm and dry the air making for ideal fire conditions. These winds generally occur in the cooler months when air from a high-pressure system in the Desert Southwest flows westward towards a low-pressure system in the Pacific off the California coast.
Similar wind scenarios are often found north of Los Angeles in Santa Barbara where the events are called “Sundowner Winds.”
Later on Tuesday, around 6:30PM, the Eaton Fire broke out in Altadena near Pasadena and swelled to more than 10,000 acres. By 10:30 that night a smaller blaze, The Hurst Fire, ignited in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley northwest of downtown Los Angeles and consumed about 500 acres. Altogether there are at least six major fires in the region.
The cause of all the blazes remain under investigation, according to Cal Fire. However it has been determined that at least one fire was arson; in fact there have been several credible reports of arson, several which include video.
The powerful Santa Ana winds are likely to continue through the weekend.
Aside from the tremendous winds, the fires were able to initially grow out of control because of what I described in my 2012 book, Eco-Tyranny, as being part of an “earth-first” mentality that has overtaken common sense within California’s environmental practices (it’s occurring in other states as well). In the case of the Los Angeles fires, forests in California are never properly cleared or manicured, making for wild overgrowth and fire potential. Additionally, as we have learned, in the name of budget cuts the County of Los Angeles allowed its residential fire hydrants to go untested. As a result, hundreds of hydrants were found to be inoperable when they were finally needed this week.
Brian Sussman is a Certified Meteorologist and the author of the new book, Climate Cult: Exposing and Defeating heir War on Life, Liberty and Property.