Through Friday, you can expect dangerous winds to accelerate any fires that spark in Southern California, but this weekend, the weather may provide some help.
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00:00Thank you other California expert Ken Clark joins us with the latest on the
00:03situation this evening. Thanks for being with us Ken. Sure. Ken we've been looking
00:08at the big picture. There's a fast-moving big fire right now in the
00:12northern Baja California Peninsula south of the border but we're a little more
00:16concerned just selfishly for our viewers sake what's going on in Southern
00:21California. So could you give us an update on the situation here near
00:25Castaic Lake. That huge fire is a better contained right now a 24% contained as
00:31a last update that's considerable improvement from last night about 10%
00:36more containment doing really well in that a lot of little spot fires around
00:39Southern California. One in the Seal Beach area, one developed recently in the
00:44last hour up the I-15 corridor at the Cajon Pass. These are being attended to
00:50really quickly by firefighters as well. These crews have been doing an amazing
00:54job over the last 24 hours first stopping the Hughes fire and stopping
00:59several smaller fires from getting out of hand. Yeah it seems like really since
01:04we've had these Santa Ana wind events after the Palisades and Eaton fires
01:08fire crews have been great about getting any fire that pops up getting that
01:11contained quickly. Of course with the Hughes fire we do have some good news
01:17insight that will help firefighters even more this weekend. That's right we have
01:21some big change in the weather coming up as we get into the weekend. Fire
01:25conditions will still be very bad through tomorrow morning but the winds
01:29will be gradually dying down tonight. The good news is we have rain on the way. We
01:33have even snow on the way for the mountains and a big change to much
01:37chillier temperatures. And Ken some of the issues that we may face with a more
01:43meaningful rain event here is we're just kind of taking you through the next
01:46couple of days here through tonight and tomorrow morning when the fire danger
01:49drops off. As you mentioned the rain rolls in. Do we expect to see many debris
01:54flows and mudslides? There's been a general trend upward with the amount of
01:58rain that we could see with this. There has been and the reason for that is this
02:02low that's coming down is going to stay part right near the coast of Central
02:05California and that's going to allow more moisture to come underneath of it
02:09off the Pacific into Southern California. There'll be far more rain in Southern
02:13California and there will be up in Central California with this. So we're
02:16looking for maybe generally a half to an inch of rainfall. Greatest amounts
02:20inland valleys and on the coastal slopes. We could be looking at some very heavy
02:25downpours in some of these showers because the cold nature of this storm
02:28these are be convective showers maybe in a thunderstorm or two around and that's
02:32the danger when we're looking at possible debris flows mudslides
02:36everything else we have all that ash out there as well. So people in the in around
02:42those burn areas need to be prepared for evacuation orders from that if they
02:48start to occur. And it seems anybody just below Altadena is in a very precarious
02:53space for debris that may come running down the road and so forth. We're even
02:57reading reports they're putting concrete structures almost to build a skeletal
03:01system around some areas where there might be maybe big things that could
03:05flow southward. Yeah. Oh they've done that in the past. Yeah. Okay.
03:11Interesting. Well Ken we always appreciate your insight there. You are
03:14the man when it comes to the California weather from Rancho Cucamonga, California
03:17longtime AccuWeather California expert Ken Clark. Thank you Jeff. All right
03:23thanks Ken.