Wind and Weather
See also: 2007 Western North American heat waveThe fires occurred at the end of a dry summer and were exacerbated by the seasonal Santa Ana winds. The San Diego Union Tribune reported, "Santa Ana winds blowing up to 60 mph (97 km/h) combined with temperatures into the 90s to create in the worst possible fire conditions." At one point swirling winds threatened to bring fire into densely populated urban areas.
Southern California was in the midst of an unusual drought; in Los Angeles, California, with only 3.21 in (82 mm) of precipitation in 2006-2007, it was the driest year on record. The combination of wind, heat, and dryness turned the chaparral into fire fuel. Officials believed that some of the fires generated their own winds, similar to the Oakland Firestorm of 1991. The effects of the smoke were felt as far away as Brentwood, California (in the East Bay, near Stockton), where it impacted local weather. The high-speed Santa Ana winds also rendered the use of dropping water from fire fighting aircraft inefficient; until such winds abate, most payloads of water are just dispersed by the wind over an area so large that the water evaporates before it can reach a large fire on the ground.
Read more about this topic: October 2007 California Wildfires
Famous quotes containing the words wind and/or weather:
“After all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high. Anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. That is what makes a people, makes their kind of looks, their kind of thinking, their subtlety and their stupidity, and their eating and their drinking and their language.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)