The National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning through Thursday for San Diego County’s mountains and valleys.
“Our brush is dry, the (humidity) is down, and now we have this wind event,” said Brent Pascua, a battalion chief with Cal Fire. “That’s a prime recipe for a large wildfire.”
San Diego Gas & Electric said early Wednesday that it is rapidly turning off power to many of its customers to help minimize the chances of sparking a wildfire as strong Santa Ana winds continue to lash San Diego County.
Winds gusted more than 40 mph at Camp Pendleton before dawn Wednesday and 80 mph at Palomar Mountain as the first of two large windstorms hit the region. The winds could intensify through mid-morning, according to the National Weather Service. The second wave will arrive late Thursday, and it’s possible a third wave will occur on Sunday.
A remarkably wet kickoff to Northern California’s rainy season has coincided with a desperately dry fall in Southern California — a huge disparity, perhaps unprecedented, between the haves and have-nots of rainfall.
Los Angeles usually gets several inches of rain by now, halfway into the rainy season, but it’s only recorded a fifth of an inch downtown since July, its second driest period in almost 150 years of record-keeping. The rest of Southern California is just as bone-dry.
Southern California is extremely dry right now, with huge portions of the region having seen less than a quarter-inch of rain in the last eight months. The landscape is parched and vegetation is withered, making the area dangerously susceptible to burning, an unusual situation for January.
“The sort of dryness we’re seeing in a lot of the plant species right now mirrors what you would typically expect in October or early November, when the rainy season starts,” said Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service.
San Diego County — in the midst of one of the driest periods on record — will be lashed by unusually cold and expansive Santa Ana winds early Wednesday that could spark wildfires, snap trees and knock out power, the National Weather Service said.
The enormous wind storm will shoot into Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties on Tuesday morning, then expand into San Diego County, which hasn’t had significant rain since last spring.
Amid an already dry winter season, the first Santa Ana wind event of 2025 is elevating fire danger this week and threatening power shut-offs for thousands of San Diego Gas & Electric customers.
The electricity utility warned nearly 65,000 customers their power may be cut off anytime from 4 p.m. Tuesday to 4 p.m. Friday amid strong winds and low humidity that create the perfect weather conditions for wildfires to spark and spread rapidly, according to the National Weather Service.
After a few wet winters, Southern California is officially back in drought conditions, with San Diego County among the regions affected.
The latest data from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows much of Southern California slipping into moderate drought status. Julie Kalansky, Deputy Director at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says San Diegans should be prepared for increasingly extreme conditions.
A new report linking fluoridated drinking water to lower IQ scores in children is sure to ratchet up the debate over a practice that’s considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
The report published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics synthesizes the results of dozens of research studies that have been released since 1989. Its overall conclusion is that the more fluoride a child is exposed to, the lower he or she tends to score on intelligence tests.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report to Congress on December 17, 2024, detailing water affordability across the U.S. among households and utilities.
The report, “Water Affordability Needs Assessment,” summarizes decades of research by utilities, academics, and associations, and includes recommendations, such as potentially establishing a federal water assistance program; increasing education, outreach, and knowledge around solutions to address affordability; and increasing ways to reduce water infrastructure capital and operating costs.
More than half of California was “abnormally dry” just days into the new year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s latest update.
As of Friday, Jan. 3, areas of “moderate drought” were isolated to Southern California while a sliver of the state near the Oregon border was under “severe drought,” the Drought Monitor said.
