Light winds, increasing humidity and a chance of rain are forecast to bring relief to Los Angeles on Thursday after dry and windy conditions fueled the spread of the ferocious Franklin fire in Malibu this week.
While that fire continued to smolder on Wednesday afternoon — with 4,000 acres scorched and 7% containment — strong Santa Ana winds subsided, prompting the National Weather Service to cancel its red flag alert for Greater Los Angeles at 1 p.m.
There will continue to be locally strong wind gusts of around 30 mph as well as areas of very low humidity through early Thursday. These conditions, however, no longer meet extreme hazard criteria, according to the weather service.
“While elevated fire weather conditions will persist into Wednesday night, the threat of the critical fire weather conditions has ended, and that’s really due to the winds decreasing,” said weather service meteorologist Kristan Lund.
A low-pressure system will sweep into the region Thursday, bringing with it a 20% chance of afternoon rain, she said. The greatest chance of scattered showers is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains, she said.
Temperatures will remain cool Thursday and Friday, with overnight lows in the 40s and daytime highs in the 60s. On Saturday, there is another chance for light rain showers in L.A. County. More substantial precipitation is expected farther north, with heavy showers forecast for San Luis Obispo County.
And in Northern California, a powerful storm system is forecast for Thursday, Friday and over the weekend, bringing 1 to 2 inches of rainfall to the Sacramento and San Francisco areas as well as dumping 10 to 20 inches of snow in elevations above 5,000 feet in the the Sierra.
In L.A. County, humidity levels are expected to rebound to the 20%-to-30% range Thursday after a dangerously dry start to the week, Lund said.
Humidity levels were already rising near the Franklin fire Wednesday and had reached the low teens in Malibu by the afternoon, she said.
On Thursday, the return of onshore winds, moving from the ocean up the mountains, is expected to help humidity levels continue to rise, which in turn should help firefighters get a handle on the blaze, she said.
On Monday, humidity levels were critically low — in the single digits — while fearsome Santa Ana winds were gusting up to 65 mph. This menacing combination prompted the weather service to issue a rare “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning.
These extreme warnings should, on average, be issued only once every three to five years, according to the weather service. But this year there have been two back to back.
On Nov. 5, a “particularly dangerous situation” alert was issued for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The following day, the Mountain fire exploded in Camarillo Heights and, fueled by gusts of up to 80 mph, scorched more than 20,000 acres and destroyed more than 130 structures.
At a Tuesday news conference, Gov. Gavin Newsom grimly noted that the Franklin fire proved that “fire season is not a season — it’s year-round in the state of California.”
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