Dry weather along the Central Coast prompts potential fire concerns
CENTRAL COAST, Calif. (KION-TV) -- The Southern California wildfires started from extreme Santa Ana winds combined with dry conditions in the areas, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
Now, with the Central Coast seeing one of the driest periods on record with abnormally strong winds, questions arise about whether the area may see similar devastating wildfires like in Los Angeles.
"These aren't the monthly normals for the Salinas are, January is usually the wettest month," said NWS Meteorologist Dalton Behringer. "The next one to two weeks we'll see how it pans out then we'll have a better idea of what we may see in February and once that rolls around then we'll start worrying."
Meteorologist Lisa Montgomery says that the area typically receives around 2.5 inches of rain during January, but recent weather patters have proven otherwise since there are no chances of rain in the immediate future.
"We're certainly ramping up how we're looking at our fire weather incidents [and] we'll take things like fuel moisture into account," said Behringer.
CAL FIRE, who has more than two dozen crew members currently helping with the ongoing wildfires in Southern California, say that the unseasonably dry conditions on the Central Coast may be worrisome in the coming months.
"As of July, we've been consistently in critically low amounts," said CAL FIRE Captain Shayon Ascarie. "We take the new growth and we take the old growth from last season...and weigh it."
The difference in moisture from the samples that CAL FIRE collect, will determine how dry the local vegetation is and how to move forward to prepare for the fire seasons. CAL FIRE then meets with local weather experts from NOAA and the NWS to assess vegetation as well as weather.
Could the Central Coast ever experience anything as extreme as what Los Angeles is going through?
"I wouldn't say never... it certainly could [happen]," said Behringer. "It may be a once-and-a-lifetime thing. It would be more likely in the Oakland and Berkley Hills, and the East Bay. We've seen that before in the Diablo range but we really don't have the wind setup here in the Salinas-Monterey area like they do with the Diablo winds and the Santa Ana winds."
