Thousands Without Power As Santa Ana Winds Raise Wildfire Risk In San Diego County

Speaker 1: 00:00 Santa Ana winds tore through Eastern San Diego last night, fanning a fire in Rancho San Diego, two 30 acres. Fire officials say residents in the path of the Willow fire were evacuated. And one structure was destroyed. Six were damaged, Cal fire reports. The fire is 50% contained San Diego gas and electric cut power to 73,000 residents in the County because of the record strong winds and fire danger SDG. And he says, it's sending crews out to areas where the winds have decreased inspecting circuits and power lines to see when it's safe to restore service. Joining me with an update on the Santa Ana winds and the red flag conditions is Alex tardy warning coordination, meteorologist for the national weather service in San Diego County. Alex, welcome back. Speaker 2: 00:49 Thanks for having me on the winds Speaker 1: 00:50 Last night were much stronger than expected weren't they? Speaker 2: 00:55 Uh, I would say the winds were probably nearly as strong as expected for most areas. Um, the Santa Ana wind came in, uh, after sunset and when it came in, it came in with a lot of force and we saw wind gusts as high as 95 miles per hour up at, uh, Quia Maka Lake. It's a up West of Mount Laguna. So we were only expecting, you know, maybe 85 there. So a little bit stronger and a few of the windy prone areas, but more importantly areas like Ramona Escondido, Alpine, they had wind gusts over 50 miles per hour and that's where people live. And so that was the main impact overnight. When those winds set up, Speaker 1: 01:36 Tell us how dry it got to humid. It was into the single digit someplaces, wasn't it? Speaker 2: 01:42 Yes. And as we speak, it's still is so in this particular San Ana wind event, what unusual part of it was, we started off very dry. So we had a Santa Ana wind Thanksgiving weekend and we never moistened up didn't even get clouds. So we started off with very dry air and all night, last night, places that had the wind had humidity in the teens. And that's pretty unusual all night. And now with the sun coming up, it's down, like you mentioned in the single digits. So we started off dry and got even dryer with the Santa Ana wind event. Are the winds expected to die down now? Yeah, that's the ultimate question. Um, and they are expected to decrease, but the key with the winds is they're not going to completely die, so they're not going to end. Um, in fact, we're going to see in our wind prone areas, you know, like Alpine Valley center, Escondido, even tonight, there's going to be some wind gusts of 20, 25 miles per hour in, in our wind prone areas. They're still going to see wind gusts of 50, 60 miles per hour tonight. So unfortunately it looks like wind is going to continue into Friday, but the good news is that these intense, strong winds, these vicious winds we saw overnight, and this morning, those are going to decrease with sunset today. Speaker 1: 03:03 And how long has the red flag morning expected to last? Speaker 2: 03:07 So right now we have the red flag warning in effect all the way through Friday, in fact, into Saturday morning. Now the high winds, those, those strong high winds, which knocked over some trees and even knocked over a couple of vehicles on interstate eight, that high wind warning expires this evening. So we, unfortunately, because the dryer's not going to go away and we're still going to keep that week. Santa Ana wind flow right now, the red flag warning continues all the way through Friday and into Saturday. We'll reevaluate it on Friday to see if we can end it on Friday. Speaker 1: 03:44 Are we supposed to start getting rain right around now? Speaker 2: 03:47 Well, that's the key, uh, that is the most significant point to all of this. I think so back in December, 2017, we were in a similar situation with a lilac fire erupted and it just wouldn't rain. Uh, so this year a little bit different. We had a lot of rain in early November, relatively speaking, but it hasn't rained since. And so this time of year Santa Ana winds are not unusual. They're not unusual in December, but usually we have wet ground or at least recent rain and we start to green up. So that's the difference this year, same as 2017 it's as if it's October still. And so each time we get these Santa Ana winds, they have high impact in parts of our area and San Diego County. And unfortunately the bad news is we expect more Santa Ana when, on Monday of next week. Speaker 1: 04:40 Okay. Well, I've been speaking with Alex tardy, he's warning coordination, meteorologist for the national weather service in San Diego County. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker 3: 04:58 [inaudible].