California Burning: Photographs from the Los Angeles Examiner

Weather and Wildfires

While human activity is most often responsible for starting fires, it is important not to underestimate the potential danger of weather induced fires. In fact, many scientists today claim that climate change is the main culprit in the rise of wildfires.[1] This rise in temperature has resulted in extreme weather conditions, including thunderstorms, heat waves, and high winds. Furthermore, wildfires can also create their own weather. When a fire gets extremely hot, it pushes “the air above it upward, and once the air begins traveling, the atmospheric instability accelerates the updraft. As the air continues to rise, the ash gives moisture an opportunity to accumulate and condense into water droplets from which clouds with the scientific designation of pyrocumulus clouds, or ‘fire clouds,’ begin to gather and form.”[2] The 2022 Mosquito Fire in northern California exemplified this process when it produced a 40,000 foot tall pyrocumulus cloud that could be seen from Sacramento and parts of western Nevada. The cloud produced thunderstorms, sending lightning strikes and high winds below and heightening the risk of more fires starting. Eventually, the temperature dropped and the clouds subsided after a few days of burning, making the fire more manageable for firefighters.[3]

Moving down the west coast, a unique weather pattern shapes southern California’s fire season: the Santa Ana winds. The Santa Ana winds, an example of hot, dry winds known as foehns, are formed “when a high-pressure area forms over the Great Basin, the vast expanse of desert that covers much of Nevada, Utah, and southern Idaho.” Air is pushed southwest to Southern California through mountains and valleys, heating the air dramatically and increasing its speed as it travels towards the coast.[5] Santa Ana winds usually come during the month of October in waves of three to four days at a time, and in their wake, leave behind a funky energy that messes not only with the weather but also the moods of Southern Californians. During these periods, abnormal events are more likely to occur. According to essayist Joan Didion: “one woke in the night troubled not only by the peacocks screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence of surf…every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks.

Anything can happen.”6 Furthermore, the Santa Anas can be extremely dangerous, as the winds have been the cause of multiple devastating fires, including the Malibu Fire of 1958 (https://scalar.usc.edu/works/california-burning/index), which burned 26,000 acres, destroying 100 homes and killing one person.[7] The physical and emotional damage the Santa Anas have wreaked on Southern California communities makes it a prominent part of Los Angeles’s reputation. As Didion states, “the city burning is Los Angeles's deepest image of itself.”[8]
 
[1] Chunyu, D., Park, W. A., Abatzoglou, J. T., Kairong, L., Okin, G. S., Gillespie, T. W., . . . MacDonald, G. M. (2022). The season for large fires in southern california is projected to lengthen in a changing climate. Communications Earth & Environment, 3(1) doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00344-6

[2] Connected, S. (2022, March 18). How wildfires start their own weather. Science Connected Magazine. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://magazine.scienceconnected.org/2018/11/wildfires-start-their-own-weather/

[3] STANTON, SAM. “CA Fires: Mosquito Fire Grows near Foresthill | The Sacramento Bee.” Mosquito Fire in Placer, El Dorado: Homes Burn, Residents Flee as Flames Surge over American River , The Sacramento Bee,
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article265485301.html.

[4] “Chatsworth Brush Fires, 1957.” Scalar,
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/california-burning/media/chatsworth-brush-fires-2.

[5] “Hot, dry santa ana winds spur wildfires,” Ventura County Star (October 10, 2003) Retrieved from http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/hot-dry-santa-ana-winds -spur-wildfires/docview/2600105631/se-2

[6]  Didion, J. (n.d.). “The Santa Anas” Joan Didion - Murrieta valley unified school district. The Santa Anas. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from
https://www.murrieta.k12.ca.us/cms/lib5/CA01000508/Centricity/Domain/1538/The%20Santa%2 0Anas.pdf

[7] Fire Trucks Assembled during a Wildfire in Malibu, 1956. 1956-12. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.31631889. Accessed 9 Nov. 2022.

[8] Didion, J. (n.d.). “The Santa Anas” Joan Didion - Murrieta valley unified school district. The Santa Anas. Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://www.murrieta.k12.ca.us/cms/lib5/CA01000508/Centricity/Domain/1538/The%20Santa%2 0An

 

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