Sunday, October 12, 2008

Fire Danger On The Rise
The weekend has been cool and crisp - some great fall weather around San Diego! But San Diego's first Santa Ana wind event is on the way.

These are winds that have been forecast for days, as this low pressure filling into the Great Basin was first seen by these forecast models back on Wednesday of last week. Now, as these northeast winds start to rev up tomorrow, there looks to be a prolonged period of very dry weather - relative humidities at or below 15% - for several hours. Also, those winds are likely to get to 35 mph or more out in the East County.

Here's a look at the warning issued by the National Weather Service - it's in effect through Tuesday.

Our fire danger will be up there - way up there - so extra precautions are needed the next few days. This event will NOT be like the one we had last year that created that firestorm in October. Then, winds were in excess of 60 mph, and it was much longer in duration. This doesn't minimize the danger for us, but you can expect to see better conditions develop by Wednesday, when our typical October weather returns.

Matt Baylow is the Chief Meteorologist for KFMB-TV, and you can catch his weather forecasts each weeknight at 5pm, 630pm, and 11pm on San Diego's only weathercasts broadcast in High Definition. There's never been a "clearer" weather forecast, if you can get past the hair that's out of place. And sometimes the pattern on the tie. Did we mention the tie?