Fire alert issued for dry, windy weekend

Gusts and warm temperatures will increase hazard

The National Weather Service has issued a red-flag fire warning in the Bay Area for this weekend, the first such December warning in four years, amid dry, warm and windy conditions, officials said.

The red-flag declaration came a day after the agency issued a fire weather watch alert for Friday through Sunday in the Bay Area and Monterey County. But the red flag for the same period of time was issued once it was within 24 hours of the anticipated weather arriving as expected.

Naturally, the weather service is advising against outdoor burning during this period.

There has not been a red-flag fire warning issued in the Bay Area in December since 2013, during the height of the yearslong drought that finally ended earlier this year.

“It’s not unprecedented, we can get fires anytime throughout the year,” meteorologist Charles Bell said. “What’s made this year interesting is that we’ve had so little rain recently, and we just had all those days of warmer than normal temperatures and offshore winds. So any rain has been nullified.”

Wind gusts expected to reach up to 50 mph, warm temperatures and low humidity will increase

fire risk, particularly in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Diablo Range, East Bay hills and Big Sur areas.

“It’s dry enough, with wind, anything that starts will take off,” Bell said.

The only saving grace is that the calendar is approaching what Bell called the “solar minimum” with the least daylight of the year, so warm temperatures will be capped.

Since Oct. 1, Northern California has had a mediocre rain season. Some storms in November increased the moisture levels in plants and dampened the ground. But with nothing new for weeks, San Jose is now at 43 percent of its historic rainfall average for this date, with 1.58 inches, while San Francisco is at 52 percent with 3.16 inches and Oakland is at 63 percent with 3.15 inches. This time last year, every one of those cities had already had twice as much rain.

After the worst drought since California became a state in 1850, Gov. Jerry Brown last April rescinded his emergency drought declaration. Huge storms brought flooding in downtown San Jose and other areas, buried Sierra ski resorts in snow and wrecked the spillway at Oroville Dam.

If Northern California remains dry through New Year’s Day, as the forecast suggests, this December would be the third driest on record in San Francisco history with 0.02 of an inch of rain, dating back to 1849, according to the National Weather Service.

San Francisco recorded no December rainfall in 1876 and 1989. San Jose, which has received just a trace amount (less than one-hundredth of an inch) this month, would eclipse the current low of 0.04 of an inch in 1989. And Oakland International Airport, currently at 0.02 of an inch, would break the mark of .11 of an inch set in 2011.