Wildfires are erupting across Los Angeles as a windstorm creates fire conditions the National Weather Service said are “as bad as it gets,” leading President Joe Biden to cancel a nearby speaking engagement.
But as fires rage across the city, triggering mass evacuation orders, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is on a taxpayer-funded trip to Africa as part of a Biden administration presidential delegation to the close U.S. partner.
Meteorologists say that the combination of hurricane-strength winds blowing dry air down the mountains, and the second-wettest two-year span on record creating vegetative overgrowth giving way to a drought that’s turned overgrowth into fire fuel have created catastrophic fire conditions.
“The preconditions for a January fire in Southern California couldn’t be much worse. After two years of generous moisture (especially in 2022-23), the state’s 2024-25 wet season has gotten off to an intensely bifurcated start: unusually wet in NoCal and near-record dry in SoCal,” wrote meteorologist Bob Henson in Yale Climate Connections. “On top of the unusually dry conditions for early January, we’re now in the heart of the Santa Ana wind season. These notorious and dangerous downslope winds, which occur when higher-level winds are forced over the coastal mountains and toward the coast, typically plague coastal Southern California a few times each year.”
A major fire has already broken out in the Pacific Palisades, triggering mandatory evacuations for the town’s entire population of tens of thousands of residents. Another blaze has broken out in West Hollywood within an arm’s throw of Sunset Boulevard, one of the region’s busiest commercial streets.
The fire weather also drove the cancellation of President Joe Biden’s scheduled trip to Coachella Valley to announce two new national monuments.
Mayor Karen Bass, meanwhile, is in the African country of Ghana as part of a Biden administration presidential delegation for today’s inauguration of Ghana’s new president. It’s unclear if the mayor will be cutting her trip short to manage the escalating wildfire situation.
With winds peaking later on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the worst of the fires could be yet to come.
