Los Angeles Area Fire
September 1st, 2009 at 9:15 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
First, here’s a cool time lapse of the L.A. Fires...the smoke from the fires is all the way to Denver, CO. Zoom in to this map see the area just north of the city of Los Angeles. 124 Fire Engines, 12 helicopters, 6 tanker planes, 20 bulldozers and a DC-10 have been battling the blaze. Two “Super Scooper” planes have arrived to fight the fire. So far two firefighters have lost their lives (in a vehicle accident) and 3 people have been injured. A total of 89 fires started in California just on Saturday, so other fire crews are assigned to other fires. Fifty-three homes have burned in the L.A. fire and another sixty homes in the Auburn fire. A total of 6,600 homes have been evacuated. The fires have consumed nearly 200 square miles or roughly 3 1/2 times the area of the city of Grand Rapids. The L.A. fire is only about 10% contained and fire fighters say it may take 2 weeks to fully contain the flames. The fire threatens the towers of all 22 LA TV stations and 2/3rds of the FM stations that have towers on Mt. Wilson/Acton. Huge pyrocumulus clouds towered over the fires. The high temperatures at the L.A. Civic Center over the past six days have been 94-101-98-100-98 -92, and they haven’t had a drop of rain since June 5th.
Think that Cat 4 hurricane heading towards Baja might provide some relief for these folks?
no chance. those hurricanes rarely (if ever) provide weather that affects us out here. but there is supposed to be a mild el nino year, and the heavy rains with the barren hillsides will cause some serious mud issues in the foothills.
Do you have any information on fires further north? My son lives east of Sacramento and they got notice last night to packe to evacuate. As far as I know there has been no actual evacuation yet, but he said the fires there popped up very quickly and they were throwing a lot of helicopters at it. He lives outside a town called Meadow Vista, in the foothills of the Sierras. Any info would be great!
Sue
No comment!
A fire northeast of Sacramento has burned homes and forced widespread evacuations in the community of Auburn.
Read about it here – http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13237349
Thanks, Sandy, that is the next town over.
How is this going to effect my plans to California Sept 11-17? We will be in Anaheim but plan on going to Malibu and Hollywood and we are coming from Vegas. Thanks!
it’s not going to affect you at all. i live in Sierra Madre, CA, am from Byron Center, and I’ve been watching it all week. you won’t have any problems.
The smoke from those fires in addition to the ones burning in SW Colorado have made the skies a milky white color in the Denver area. It reminds me of the humid days when I lived in GR; though the humidity here is 10% with a 90 degree temp. Very deceiving, but the sunsets with this smoke are very interesting.