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California wildfires.

A very unfortunate situation is taking place in Southern California tonight as two major fires burn near Santa Monica and a new one just blowing up on the outskirts of Pasadena, with multiple structures already having been destroyed. The LAFD is so strapped for firefighters that they're having to put out a phone number for firefighters to call in for work. Conditions are expected to deteriorate tonight with wind gusts up to 100 mph expected.
 
The SPC put out an Extremely Critical Fire Risk for that area for today:

day1otlk_fire.gif

It looks like it could continue through tomorrow:

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And even Friday:

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Although after that, the chance of fire-favorable weather drops precipitously (thankfully--knock on wood there!).
 

Error Page | CAL FIRE

www.fire.ca.gov www.fire.ca.gov

This is quite useful for looking at current data, as well as map overlays.

It's really a bit overwhelming seeing the evacuation orders layered over satellite images of dense residential areas.

Here's a small bit of the Palisades Fire:

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The orange is inside the incident perimeter ("Perimeters are generalized and do not necessarily indicate structures within the boundaries have been damaged or destroyed."), and the red is evacuation orders, and this is just a small chunk of the map, since I wanted to zoom in enough to be able to show how densely populated these areas are.

So many lives being impacted by this. I'm very sad to hear that there have been fatalities already. :( I hope that no more lives will be lost. It looks like currently NWS LA has the high wind warning lasting for another 6 hours yet. It's just awful.
 
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LAFD stated everyone in the Department is actively involved and that assistance has been requested from Northern California and surrounding states. The three different multi-million gallon water tanks used for firefighting in the Palisades area were exhausted overnight and LAFD is currently fighting the fire with municipal water supplies, with numerous pressure failures reported.
 
Checking in from a Californian’s perspective…

I’m OK. Thankfully the fires aren’t near me, but we are feeling the effects of the fire weather. The winds are widespread and fierce, probably gusting to 50+ mph (I’ll check my weather station to see what its max recorded gust is when I get home). Saw two overturned semis on the way to work today. Edison has our power turned off and the outage is supposed to last until Friday - our house has backup batteries but they’ll probably last another 12 hours at best. We had close calls with the Line and Bridge Fires last year, so we’re no stranger to wildfires but even I’m shocked and heartbroken by what is unfolding in LA County. A true nightmare scenario.
 
The Mt. Harvard cameras, just slightly south of the Mt Wilson ones, are almost entirely smoke, as well as the Arcadia cameras (southeast of Mt Harvard cameras). I honestly want to share pictures from a ton of these cameras, but it's mostly a lot of smoke, and I don't need to spam the thread. But wow.

Also, with the ALERTCalifornia cameras, you can go to specific cameras and watch the spread of the fire from the cameras that have a view of smoke and fire. It's absolutely wild to see how quickly it's moving, but with these winds, it makes sense.
 
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And now the Palisades fire is up to 11,802 acres, according to watchduty.org, crediting it to Cal Fire, though the Cal Fire website is not yet updated with that amount.

Edit: Cal Fire site now confirms that total for the Palisades fire.

Instead of posting again, here's another edit: Palisades fire is now 15,832 acres per Cal Fire.
 
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