Weather Officials Monitoring Santa Ana Winds for Possible Critical Fire Conditions

The threat of strong Santa Ana winds in the coming week was being monitored by weather officials across Southern California.

Critical fire dangers were predicted to arrive Thursday night and linger into the weekend in the Los Angeles area, while the National Weather Service office in San Diego said it was monitoring the situation but was not yet issuing the same warning for its forecast area of Orange, San Diego, western Riverside and western San Bernardino counties.

A "significant threat of critical fire weather conditions'' will start in Los Angeles County late Thursday night and blow into Saturday, the National Weather Service office said in a special weather statement issued today.

"Extremely dry fuel conditions in place would allow for large and rapid fire growth potential if winds and dry air develop as projected late in the week.''

The warm and dry winds were called likely in every microclimate in Los Angeles County, as well as Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, the NWS Oxnard office warned.

High fire danger will start Thursday night in the Central California Coast region, as an upper-atmosphere trough of low pressure will move south into the deserts of Nevada and Utah, feeding air into high pressure zone over the California coast.

“Preliminary indications suggest this Santa Ana could be slightly stronger and drier than our last event on Friday,'' forecasters wrote. “A prolonged period of single-digit humidities with temperatures climbing into the 90s will be possible on Friday and Saturday.