The strong winds that make wildfires almost impossible to fight and contain have picked back up Wednesday morning. The notorious Santa Ana winds in the Los Angeles area eased Tuesday, but are expected to be stronger throughout Wednesday, per NPR.
The National Weather Service issued particularly dangerous situation red flag warnings for fire weather conditions early Wednesday. Some of these warnings will be lifted at 4 p.m. MT on Wednesday as winds and other fire enabling weather conditions are expected to decrease, according to CNN.
Other warnings will be lifted later in the day and winds are expected to ease by 7 p.m. MT.
“PDS Red Flag Warnings are for the extreme of the extreme fire weather scenarios. In other words, this setup is about as bad as it gets,” per the National Weather Service on X.
These Santa Ana winds are also referred to as the “devil winds,” starting at high altitudes and blowing toward sea level. “The strong, dry and often warm winds blow west from Utah and Nevada to Southern California. They cause dramatic temperature increases and decreased humidity,” as previously reported by the Deseret News.
How the winds make the fires more difficult to fight
“Once those winds and fire mix, there’s there’s just no stopping it,” said Kelly Bird, a spokesperson from Unified Fire Authority who is in California with fellow Utahns fighting the fires.
“They weren’t able to get a handle on it because the winds just blew it from one structure to the next in a matter of seconds. It carried embers over into new neighborhoods and started spot fires in new neighborhoods and, and there’s just no way any any fire department in any area is going to be able to to handle that,” Bird said Tuesday.
According to CBS, not only do these winds accelerate the speed and spread of the fires, they also affect how the fires are fought. The strong winds can make it dangerous to fly aircraft used for fighting the fires.
“I worry about how dangerous it is to fly around these fires,” said 1st Lt. Aiden Flores with the California Air National Guard, according to CBS. “It’s not a normal mission as they go down and drop the retardant.
These aircraft make aerial drops of water and fire retardant and these winds can impact where the dropped material lands.
Because of this, breaks in the winds have been essential to fighting and containing the fires. When the winds are at manageable levels it allows firefighters to make headway on the fires, per The Associated Press.
An air tanker drops retardant while working to contain the Eaton Fire in Altadena, Calif., Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. | Noah Berger
A look into the aerial firefighting in California
There are currently eight activated military C-130 planes involved in the firefight in California. These aircraft have been modified to help contain wildfires, according to CBS.
These firefighting aircraft are able to released 3,000 gallons of water or fire retardant in mere seconds. This fleet of C-130s has dropped over 160,000 gallons of suppressant in this firefight.