Wildfires continue to burn throughout California as we enter mid-September.
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00:00We're going to head to California where crews continue to fight the bridge fire which has prompted evacuation orders in Los Angeles and in parts of San Bernardino counties.
00:07That's right Jeff, after last week seeing record-breaking temperatures in Los Angeles, we're still seeing that dryness out there, that drought, and you can see that that is leading to widespread fires here across parts of southern, even central California along the coast and even inland just a little bit.
00:22So overall, here's a look at the current fires ongoing here across the central and western portions of the lower 48.
00:29You can see widespread fires, especially across central Texas, but it's going to be these fires here along the west coast, the wildfires we're primarily paying attention to as we head throughout the next couple of days and as we head into the weekend.
00:40As of right now, 67 total fires primarily and they are right now burning over 2 million acres of land.
00:47In addition to that, whenever you factor in the smoke, most of the heavier bands of smoke are happening from Canada across the Great Lakes, even being pulled into the far northeastern portions of the country.
00:58You can see some of that suspended smoke, especially during the afternoon and evening hours, especially when the sun is setting as you're looking off to the west.
01:05You can see some of that suspended smoke and a lot of that smoke is also being funneled by the jet stream across the plains here as we head throughout this afternoon and as we head into this evening.
01:14So we will be watching that very carefully.
01:16And whenever you look at the wildfire year by year comparison, whenever you factor in 2024, so far the number of fires is significantly less obviously than these other years since we're only in September.
01:27But whenever you look at the total acres burned, we're already above almost doubling the acres that have been burned from last year.
01:34Even though last year had almost two times as many fires as what we've seen so far in 2024.
01:39So a very devastating year is ongoing here as far as wildfires for the year 2024.
01:44And for California specifically, we're watching out for these four primary fires, the Boone Fire, Coffee Pot Fire, the Lion Fire and also the Airport Fire right there.
01:52A lot of these, some of these are contained, especially the Boone Fire starting to get that containment increasing, but still lots of acres being burned out there across parts of California,
02:00including that San Bernardino County Fire that we were talking about.
02:04That one started back on September 5th and so far it's burned over almost up to 40,000 acres and as of right now only 21% contained here for us.
02:13And then another one we're watching out for is the Orange County one, only 5% contained.
02:17So watching out for drought conditions continuing across the West Coast.
02:21We'll have more on AccuWeatherhead coming up right after this break.