As both the Easy and Hill fires burn, the extremely dry and windy weather is expected to continue through midafternoon Thursday as a powerful Santa Ana wind event continues to buffet Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Easy Fire, in Ventura County’s Simi Valley, approached the Reagan Library’s front door Wednesday before firefighters began to get it under control. In San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, the Hill Fire prompted mandatory evacuations and highway closures.
The Easy Fire burned throughout the night as firefighters struggled to contain the blaze that has already torched 1,700 acres and forced the mandatory evacuations of 30,000 people, according to the Ventura County Fire Department late Wednesday.
The Hill Fire (also called Hillside Fire) broke out Wednesday morning and quickly burned at least 250 acres as it spread to neighborhoods north of San Bernardino. The fire remains 15 percent contained.
The National Weather Service in Los Angeles forecast 50 to 70 mph winds for Thursday with “isolated gusts” up to 80 mph in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The NWS is still using ominous warning language that it crafted specifically for this event, having issued an “Extreme Red Flag Warning” through 6 p.m. local time Thursday for the combination of high winds, relative humidity in the low single digits, and abundant, extremely dry and combustible vegetation. However, with slackening winds forecast for Thursday afternoon, the threat of extreme fire behavior with any fires that ignite will lessen somewhat. The department issued the rare “extreme red flag” weather warnings, particularly for the mountainous portions of the south.
Farther south, in areas of San Diego and southwestern San Bernardino counties, winds are forecast to gust up to 50 to 60 mph through Thursday morning, which will aid in wildfire spread. Winds are forecast to remain offshore during the afternoon, which will keep humidity levels low, but wind gusts won’t be as strong. Red flag warnings are up for this region, along with high wind warnings, through much of Thursday.
The red flag warnings could be extended through Friday for all of Southern California, even though lighter winds are anticipated, simply because of the dry air mass and weak to moderate offshore Santa Ana winds.
The ongoing Santa Ana event has transported cold air westward from the Great Basin region, with freeze warnings in effect for inland areas of Southern California.
As Californians in the south brace for another day of adverse weather and quickly spreading fires, their neighbors to the north are contending with a different set of factors from blazes like the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County. Since the Kincade Fire sparked in Sonoma wine country last week, it’s consumed 76,825 acres, an area roughly the size of Kansas City, Kan., and is now 45 percent contained.
But as the fire is slowly contained in Sonoma, San Francisco Bay area residents are slowly emerging from days of planned power outages enacted to prevent further fire-starting conditions amid high winds and low humidity. At their peak, more than half a million residents around the Bay Area were affected.
Read more: