Southern California Is Poised for More Damaging and Dangerous Winds

Southern California was bracing Monday for another round of powerful, sweeping winds in and around Los Angeles, where the landscape remains dangerously starved of rain and firefighters are still working to fully contain wildfires that have left at least 27 people dead and destroyed thousands of homes.Forecasters on Sunday issued another dire fire weather warning for the area, calling Monday’s conditions a “particularly dangerous situation” — a rare level of alert that it has issued several times this month.The sweeping Santa Ana winds will likely reach damaging speeds across portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties Monday afternoon into Tuesday.

Humidity levels will plummet at the same time, creating a prime environment for extreme fire behavior and rapid fire growth.Santa Anas are the desiccating winds that are common in winter, blowing out of Nevada and Utah and into southwestern California.Carrying dry desert air, they push over the mountains in the Transverse Ranges and accelerate as they move downslope, howling into the canyons and valleys.Over the last two weeks, the region has been bombarded with a series of Santa Ana wind events, the first and most powerful of which whipped up the Palisades and Eaton fires on Jan.

7.Subsequent rounds of winds hampered firefighters’ efforts to control those fires, and additional blazes sparked across the region, where vegetation has been dangerously dry.When the worst conditions are most likelyThe “particularly dangerous situation” designation will be in place from noon Pacific time on Monday to 10 a.m.

on Tuesday....