Inland SoCal faces more blistering heat
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Inland Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley faced another round of high heat Friday as firefighters around the state worked to contain wildfires and the dairy industry dealt with livestock deaths.
A National Weather Service excessive heat warning said daily highs between 100 and 110 degrees, with some locations reaching 115, would be common away from the south coast through Saturday. Some coastal sections could see highs into the 90s, the weather service said.
A heat advisory in the San Joaquin Valley warned of temperatures from 103 to 107 both days.
The source of the heat is a strong upper-level high pressure system over the southwestern U.S. along with breezy northerly winds at the surface.
Those winds triggered a red flag fire danger warning for the south Santa Barbara County mountains and coast, where the gusts are known as “sundowners.” Forecasters said gusts up to 50 mph could last through Saturday morning and possibly into Sunday.
A new blaze that broke out Friday in Santa Barbara County quickly surged to nearly 5 square miles and forced the evacuations of about 300 people from homes on rural roads, county fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni said.
It was 10 percent contained.
On fire lines around the state, a nearly 3-squaremile blaze near the Yolo County community of Winters west of Sacramento was 31 percent contained.
Evacuation orders were lifted for more than 50 homes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
California’s largest current blaze, meanwhile, grew to more than 18 square miles in the southern Sierra Nevada’s Sequoia National Forest.
The firefighting force surpassed 760 with the arrival of additional hotshot crews to work in the rugged wilderness between Schaeffer Mountain and the Kern River nearly 20 miles north of Kernville.
Helicopters and air tankers were making drops, but containment remained low at just 10 percent.
In the San Joaquin Valley to the west, the Tulare County Board of Supervisors on Thursday extended a local state of emergency originally declared June 30 because of increased livestock deaths that resulted from a heat wave last month, The Porterville Recorder reported .
Demand from Tulare and other counties for rendering services that are required for disposing of the animals exceeded available capacity.
The problem was exacerbated when the local rendering facility had a mechanical breakdown that halted pickup and processing, a board agenda summary said.
Tulare County’s dairy industry alone has more than a half-million cows.
“Cow mortality, that happens every day,” Tom Tucker, the county assistant agricultural commissioner, told the newspaper. “It’s the heat that has made it worse. It hasn’t stopped. We are losing our cows, and it is at an extreme.”