Extreme wind bound for California, raising fears of another round of wildfires
Intense concern is developing ahead of an “extreme” wind event forecast to begin Sunday in Northern California, now expected to bring freeway-level gusts to regions already brutalized this year by wildfires.
The National Weather Service says “widespread extreme fire weather conditions” Sunday and Monday will include 70-mph gusts in some high-elevation areas, including hills in the North Bay and East Bay.
Those vicious winds will be joined by gusts that could hit 40 to 50 mph at lower elevations across the Bay Area, the Sacramento Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills. The region will also see “very low daytime humidity with extremely poor overnight recoveries,” the NWS Sacramento office said in a forecast infographic.
Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist who studies extreme weather events, says the looming windstorm is expected to be similar or perhaps even worse in intensity than those associated with two major North Bay wildfires in recent Octobers: the Kincade Fire, California’s largest blaze of 2019; and the 2017 Wine Country fires, which killed dozens of people.
“Key message: event resembles Oct 2019/2017 events,” Swain tweeted Friday morning, summing up a detailed forecast report from the NWS Bay Area office. “Max winds in hills will be similar, but max winds at lower (elevations) may be —stronger— & airmass —drier— than those events.”
The NWS forecast discussion report that Swain shared also suggests potential for devastating wildfire activity, comparing conditions to those that led the state’s deadliest fire ever to erupt.
“There will be no marine layer so even the valleys will be bone dry,” the NWS report reads, in part. “And as has been noted throughout the week this will all occur on top of record dry fuels. So yes it has similarities to the 2018 Camp Fire as well.”
The expected conditions are virtually certain to trigger a red flag warning. Those warnings, the highest alert issued by the agency for critical wildfire weather, typically come about 24 to 36 hours before the start of a weather event.
A fire weather watch, one step below a red flag warning, has already been issued for the entire Sacramento Valley, northern San Joaquin Valley and northern foothills for Sunday morning through Tuesday afternoon. A high wind watch is in place Sunday afternoon through Monday morning for the entire San Francisco Bay Area.
An existing red flag warning that started Wednesday, in place for parts of the Bay Area, the northern Sacramento Valley and a stretch of the foothills, was set to end at 5 p.m. Friday.
Forecasts show a oneday reprieve of calm conditions Saturday. Much cooler weather is also coming to the capital region, which has reached the 90s an astounding 14 times this month. Sacramento’s forecast shows a high of 73 degrees Saturday and Sunday, staying in the 70s through at least Thursday. Overnight lows could drop into the 40s.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. says on its website that it is monitoring the weather for another potential round of “public safety power shutoff” outages that would likely begin Sunday in response to the extreme wind event in the forecast. PG&E says it will provide more information by 8 p.m. Friday.
As of midday Friday, the utility company was still in the process of restoring power to thousands of customers, after shutting it off for 31,000 homes and businesses across seven Northern California counties beginning Wednesday.