SoCal Fires: Smoke plumes visible on doppler radar
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Los Angeles doppler radar loop shows smoke plumes from fires billowing north of La Canada and the 210 freeway toward Palmdale.
You don't see this everyday.
Smoke plumes from the fires north of LA are clearly visible on doppler radar in Los Angeles today. The radar beam reflects back off of smoke particles and appears similar to rain showers.
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The Station Fire is only 5% contained as of this afternoon. It is burning an area now well over 100,000 acres.
There is one very interesting meteorological aspect to this fire. It is not a Santa Ana Wind driven event. In fact winds have been relatively light in the Los Angeles area the past few days. This is fortunate, because Santa Ana Winds generally blow from the northeast at speed of up to 60 mph. If the Santa Ana's kick in, we could see a firestorm driven down into heavily populated areas southwest of the fire, which has remained largely in sparsely populated steep mountains and canyons so far.
The good news is so far the Santa Ana winds are not in the forecast. Meteorological conditions do not favor a Santa Ana event the next few days. There is some chance that higher pressure building over the inner mountain west could turn winds into the northeast by this weekend. That could threaten new areas north of Los Angeles.
Let's hope they can get the fires contained by next week. It's really early in fire season, and the Santa Ana's will blow sooner or later.
PH