Over 29,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area are on fire right now. The fires emerged after the Santa Ana winds swept into the Los Angeles area Tuesday. The largest is the Palisades fire, which is quickly burning through the Pacific Palisades and Malibu communities. It's one of four ongoing critical fires — only one of which is partially contained. Ahead of the windy week, a Red Flag Warning was issued for an increased fire risk due to the strong winds, low humidity and higher temperature. Today, we dig into the Santa Ana winds: What they are and how they combined with other factors to create conditions for the most destructive fire in Los Angeles' history. Questions, story ideas or want us to dig more into the science underpinning natural disasters? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Full Episode
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwifers. Emily Kwong here. So you may have been hearing about how the wildfires in Los Angeles are connected to the Santa Ana winds. These winds blow every year. But meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Los Angeles anticipated this week's windstorm would, quote, likely be the most destructive in over a decade.
The winds picked up Tuesday morning. It is completely hazy. Dark. Sparking several fires across L.A. County. We've seen palm trees on fire. We've Especially in canyon slopes, where the wind dropped the humidity.
Basically, the moisture and rain gets squeezed out of these systems right on those same slopes where the Santa Ana winds blow the hardest.
We talked to Alexander Gershnov about this. He's a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. And he says that last winter was really wet and vegetation flourished. But this year, the L.A. area has received very little rain for months.
Specifically in that region where the wildfires are right now, you have a lot of vegetation dry and ready to burn. And that's exactly where you get the strongest Santa Ana wind.
The largest and earliest of the fires was in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Within hours, other fires began, including the Eaton, Hearst, Lydia, and Sunset fires.
The battle against the deadly Eaton fire is now an around-the-clock fight. The wind-driven blaze exploded to more than 10,000 acres by morning.
As of this taping Thursday afternoon, this patchwork of fires has claimed the lives of five people and leveled the homes and businesses of multiple communities. Nearly 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate. and nearly 30,000 acres have burned. So today on the show, we talk about the chain of environmental and weather events that led to these fires.
We get into the science behind the winds and the role of human-caused climate change. You're listening to ShoreWave, the science podcast from NPR.
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