With massive blazes continuing and at least 25 dead, the National Weather Service (NWS) has reinstated the “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red flag warnings for Southern California on Wednesday as gusty winds have picked back up.
The red flag warnings were dropped on Tuesday due to lower winds than expected.
While Wednesday’s winds were not expected to be as strong as last week, they were expected to surpass 50 miles per hour in high-elevation areas. These winds appear to be outside of the major active fire zones including the Palisades and Eaton fires according to NWS. However, the “upper reaches” of the Eaton Fire could potentially be impacted, the NWS said on Wednesday.
“This is really just the last push of the winds here today,” National Weather Service meteorologist, Todd Hall said.
“Hopefully if we get through today, we’re gonna have some better conditions for late week, especially into Friday and Saturday.”
The air quality index (AQI) for much of the Los Angeles basin showed good to moderate air quality on Wednesday morning, according to AirNow.gov. However, those values could be deceiving.
“Wind-blown ash particles may be too large to be picked up by our regular instruments and will not influence the AQI measures that we pointed folks to look at for air quality,” Nichole Quick, chief medical adviser for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, explained in a Wednesday news conference. The high winds from last week that spread the Eaton Fire north of Los Angeles and the Palisades Fire carried similar conditions to what was expected on Wednesday. Most of the red flag warnings were expected to expire by 3pm on Wednesday.
Conditions are expected to improve into the end of the week, with a decrease in winds, and the remainder of red flag warnings are expected to expire.
On Wednesday morning, more than 77,000 households were without electricity and utilities as they were shut off to prevent lines from igniting new flames.
