“An active fire season continued during this period–considerably later than usual in many parts of the Rockies, stretching already dwindling seasonal fire crews thin. In California, while fire activity has again picked up relative to the comparative August lull, no highly destructive fires have occurred over the past month despite vegetation moisture levels approaching or exceeding record dryness levels for October at times (though there have been a few near misses). And a fair number of risk-reducing prescribed burns have been able to go forward on the less windy days–always encouraging to see. Meanwhile, the Bridge and Line fires in the SoCal mountains (which originally ignited in early September) have continued to flare up on occasion, but generally these have been interior pockets of vegetation burning and have not burned any further structures.”
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“Fire season continues across central and southern CA; risk will continue to spike during offshore wind events
Although we have not seen a major autumn wildfire outbreak yet in California, we also haven’t seen widespread season-mitigating (let alone season-ending) rainfall south of the about the I-80 corridor. In fact, vegetation moisture levels in parts of SoCal are now approaching record levels again following the early October heat and more recent dry winds–and even in the Bay Area conditions remain drier than average for the time of year. So fire season continues from about the SF Bay Area southward (less so to the north, where more widespread rain has fallen on a couple of occasions now and more will fall over the next week). That means that critical fire weather conditions can and probably will arise a couple of times over the next 10-14+ days, especially in the SoCal mountains and coastal plain where dry offshore Santa Ana winds (and relatively warm conditions) are expected periodically. Right now, none of the Santa Ana events in the forecast appear to be particularly extreme–but the magnitude of these events can be tricky to predict very far in advance as they are quite sensitive to the exact placement and depth of “inside slider” low pressure systems over the Great Basin (of which there will be at least a couple). So until widespread soaking rains arrive–and that is not looking likely south of about San Francisco for the next 2+ weeks–fire season will remain active and be punctuated by occasional higher-risk periods.”
NOTE: Significant rain is expected in our local starting Sunday and continuing for several days. Snow showers are possible. It won’t bring an end to fire season, but it does bring about a respite.