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New Fire Danger Threatens to Worsen Most Disastrous Wildfire Season in California History
A firefighter holds a water hose while fighting a wildfire Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017, in Santa Rosa, Calif. Image credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez.
A record-breaking heat wave will build over Southern California over the weekend and peak on Tuesday, bringing triple-digit temperatures that could set marks for the hottest temperatures ever recorded so late in the year in the Los Angeles area. Accompanying the heat will be the notorious Santa Ana winds, which will bring a multi-day period of critical fire danger, Saturday through Tuesday.
According to NOAA, the hottest temperatures ever recorded after October 23 in Southern California (along with the Weather Underground forecast for Tuesday) were:
105°F Riverside, 10/28/1915 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 100°F)
101°F LAX Airport, 11/1/1966 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 96°F)
101°F Longbeach, 11/1/1966 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 100°F)
100°F Downtown Los Angeles, 11/1/1966 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 101°F)
100°F Burbank/Glendale/Pasadena, 10/26/2003 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 99°F)
100°F San Diego, 11/4/2010 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 91°F)
99°F Bakersfield, 10/27/1906 (WU forecast for Tuesday: 90°F)
The heat wave and Santa Ana winds will be caused by a large near-record-strength dome of high pressure expected to settle in over the Great Basin, a few hundred miles northeast of Los Angeles. The difference in pressure between this high-pressure system and lower pressure over Southern California will drive gusty northeast winds over Southern California. Since these winds will originate over desert areas, they will be hot and dry. As the air descends from the mountains to the coast, the air will get hotter and drier, due to adiabatic compression—the process whereby the pressure on a parcel of air increases as it descends, decreasing its volume, and thus increasing its temperature as work is done on it.
New Fire Danger Threatens to Worsen Most Disastrous Wildfire Season in California History by Jeff Masters, Weather Underground, Oct 20, 2017
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Sun Oct 15, 2017
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- Hurricane Ophelia: Warnings as storm heads to UK, BBC News, Oct 15, 2017
- Human success at the expense of other species is “a pretty awful legacy” by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Oct 12, 2017
Mon Oct 16, 2017
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Tue Oct 17, 2017
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- Hurricane Ophelia: the shape of things to come? by John Sweeney, Irish Times, Oct 17, 2017
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Wed Oct 18, 2017
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- 2017 lining up to be among the three warmest years on record by Rebecca Lindsey, NOAA's Climate.gov, Oct 18, 2017
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Thu Oct 19, 2017
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- September 2017: Earth's 4th Warmest September on Record by Jeff Masters, Weather Underground, Oct 18, 2017
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Fri Oct 20, 2017
- A brief history of the Earth's CO2 by Joanna Haigh, BBC News, Oct 19, 2017
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- E.P.A. Scrubs a Climate Website of ‘Climate Change’ by Lisa Friedman, New York Times, Oct 20, 2017
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Sat Oct 21, 2017
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- New Fire Danger Threatens to Worsen Most Disastrous Wildfire Season in California History by Jeff Masters, Weather Underground, Oct 20, 2017
- Warm waters melting Antarctic ice shelves may have appeared for the first time in over 7,000 years by Sev Kender, The Conversation UK, Oct 19, 2917
- The most effective clean energy policy gets the least love by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Oct 21, 2017
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