Lets Talk about the Fires. ~ 2025-01-09
A wildfire outside of Athens, Greece (Aug 2021)
The scenes out of Greater Los Angeles have been nothing short of dreadful. It’s one of those rare events where you realize you’re witnessing a historic moment in weather in real time. Given the impact area, this is already a multi-billion dollar disaster where impacts will be felt for years on end. To think in the aftermath of the fire that there will be a housing crisis, political fallout, and long term chronic health consequences sickens me (with those things being just the tip of the iceberg).
Wildfires (and fires in general) have been a phenomena I loathe, which my distaste for started really young. In early elementary school, with a very specific catalyst. We had an assembly in the gymnasium where one of the town’s fire department lieutenants came in to give a fire safety presentation. During this presentation, the classic elementary school TV cart was rolled out and he popped in this VHS of some early 90s documentary of sorts that detailed how a kid kicking over a candle turned his house into an inferno in a matter of minutes. Needless to say, the imagery and messaging of that documentary was cemented so vividly into my mind that I had frequent recurring nightmares of my childhood home going up in flames. It got to a point where I would check every candle in the house before I went to bed (and my mom REALLY loves her candles). Eventually, and thankfully, I began to grow out of the perpetual fear thanks to Boy Scouts. Learning how to make, maintain, and properly manage fires really put things into perspective for me. I quickly learned about the ‘Fire Triangle,’ which embodies the three things needed to have a fire; Fuel, Oxygen, and Heat.
In Los Angeles’ case right now, a strong sneeze could ignite a conflagration if you’re not careful. Meteorologically, it couldn’t have been a worse scenario. This all can be traced back months earlier, where unprecedented rainfall dominated SoCal. Loads of rain sounds like a great thing on paper (minus all of the flooding that happens), but in the long run it can spell big problems. That rain does not last forever, and eventually, things begin to dry back out as they do in Southern California. Fueled by that excessive rain is an abundance of new plant growth, which lost its source of rain that it had been seeing. As vegetation dries out, it becomes the abundance of kindling needed to start a proper fire. Leg number 1 of the Triangle; Fuel.
Surface Analysis from January 7th, 2025 at 18Z (10 AM PST). Note the collection of high pressures (Blue H’s) north of the Great Basin with the surface low (red L) over the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. The tight isobars (brown squiggly lines) between the two features indicates strong surface winds flowing north to south) Ignition of the Palisade Fire occurred shortly after this time.
The Santa Ana winds are not an unfamiliar phenomena in Southern California. Their meteorology is quite interesting, where the fairly persistent Great Basin High interacts with a coastal low, tightening the pressure gradient needed to move large volumes of dry air from the Basin, over the Sierras and down over the Pacific Coast. For this event, things were orientated a little differently, where an upper level trough formed a low over the Baja California Peninsula while the Great Basin High strengthened over the northern Great Basin. This due north-south orientation of the two surface features created some extremely strong surface northerly winds, with gusts nearing hurricane force at times. With the Great Basin air mass containing a Relative Humidity of 20%, this bone-dry and fast-moving air mass was the perfect second leg of the triangle; Oxygen.
Of course, the third leg of the triangle is Heat. The Santa Ana winds were kind enough to provide that too. Well… sort of. With hurricane-force gusts come the hazard of downed power lines. A few sparks are all that is needed with this perfect alignment of the other two ingredients. This event that is unfolding reminds me greatly of the horrifying 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which I covered in one of my first June First mini documentaries. Scarily in that case, the downed lines were thanks to a lack of maintenance on behalf of the electric company, leading to one of the largest lawsuits in history in the wake of loss of 90 people and an entire city.
With all this being said, it comes to the main point that I’d like to make: Wildfires are severe weather and they do not get the correct pre-event messaging they require.
An underappreciated role of the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center are its Fire Weather Outlooks. Dedicated fire weather forecasters outline contours of locations that have aligned conditions that support the growth of wild and brush fires (including conditions for dry thunderstorms). Between the SPC Fire Forecasters and the work of the NWS Los Angeles office, they were on top of the forecast. NWS LOX even issued the first ever PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) Red Flag Warning on the 6th of January, well before the winds really picked up. However, forecasts for wildfires, much like excessive rainfall flash flooding events, do not get the same reaction as tornado or hurricane events.
NWS SPC Fire Weather Outlook (Day 3-8) issued on January 6th, 2025, highlighting the prime conditions needed for wildfires over the greater LA metro and coastal SoCal.
Oftentimes before tornado outbreaks or hurricanes, the weather community loves to spread the word for folks to be prepared. Wildfires and Excessive Rainfall Flash Flooding rarely get the same amount of attention of caution BEFORE it happens. They always occur in an almost postmortem-type of way. Using an excessive rainfall example, Helene just a few months ago had all eyes and messaging was focused on Florida’s Big Bend. However, in the end, the real killer was the interior flooding in southern Appalachia that the NWS Weather Prediction Center had highlighted with at least a Moderate (Level 3 out of 4) risk for excessive rainfall 36+ hours before landfall. Yet few in the affected area knew what was coming. Forecasts are dialed in, but spreading the message falls short.
In my estimation, I think this is due to a few factors. Firstly, the larger weather community (mostly outside of the professional NWS or Media settings) does not have the same investment of interest in Fire or Excessive Rain-type weather events because they are quite benign from a meteorological perspective. Fast moving dry air or tons of stratiform rain does not peak the same curiosity as violent tornadoes or massive hurricanes, simply put. This continues to be true in the relatively recent growth of independent weather forecasting through social media. Events like tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards draw in a much wider audience than that of things like wildfires or excessive rain, so the focus of the content goes there. It makes total sense from a social media business perspective.
NWS Los Angeles’ social media graph detailing the PDS Red Flag Warning issued on January 6th, 2025.
Tracing that idea back to the audience, which ranges from people that are also enthusiasts to folks that are disillusioned in traditional media that want their weather from an independent source (with the majority well in-between), they too are more invested in events such as hurricanes and tornadoes. This leads me to further believe that the general population that does not have an interest in weather does not see things like wildfires or excessive rainfall events as severe weather. They are disasters, yes, but not something that is forecastable (directly, in their eyes). It is easy to point at a hurricane or a strong thunderstorm and communicate their threats and associated forecasts. The conditions for wildfires and excessive rainfall events are simply just too benign for those not involved or invested in the weather ecosphere. Forecasters or weather communicators cannot point to a specific entity and say, ‘this specific entity may cause a wildfire,’ in the same way that we would for a developing tornadic supercell or maturing hurricane.
All of this is to say that there is something that needs to be done about the messaging around wildfire conditions (and excessive rainfall events, too) that meets the same level of action as tornado setups or hurricanes. I don’t want to be someone who points out problems without offering solutions, so my suggestion is that the effective communicators in the weather space should put the same level of investment into fire or excessive rain forecasts as tornado, blizzard, or hurricane forecasts. I do not know how the messaging needs to change in order to make it effective, but there should be a more devoted effort by those in the weather communication space to better spread the message of fire forecasts.
Having a great forecast is one thing, but being able to communicate it is a whole other ballgame.
I would one day like to document a fire. Of course, I would do so in the company of those that know what they are doing, but my dormant fear for them definitely still lingers. Much like flash floods, they are brutally unforgiving that require the upmost respect. Stay Strong, LA.
Cheers,
Ethan