http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-09300...-home-headlines

wow....I heard there were fires....I never really saw how bad they were......That looks awful.

They just seem to pop up and completely envelope California when they happen. Pretty scary stuff. I wonder how the insurance premiums work for this sort of stuff that is beyond your control.

They just seem to pop up and completely envelope California when they happen. Pretty scary stuff.  I wonder how the insurance premiums work for this sort of stuff that is beyond your control.

They seem to pop up for 1 very good reason...the weather. In the late fall, California tends to get large, high pressure airmasses that form up in the high deserts - the Mojave, etc. These things can sit up there, and the air from them starts pushing itself south towards the lower pressure areas in the valleys, the L.A. basin, etc.

 

So what happens is you have a lot of dry air moving from the deserts south and west into the valleys and the basins. This sets up your classic tinderbox...the air and heat dry out plants, then when something does ignite, the dry air just feeds it. Out here they call it the Santa Ana wind.

 

This year has a chance to be particularly bad, because of all the rain this area got last winter. It got so much rain that it fed a lot of plant growth during the rainy season, and then all those plants got to spend the summer drying out. There's a ton of brush up in those mountains that has the potential to burn off this year if the winds stay favorable.

They seem to pop up for 1 very good reason...the weather.  In the late fall, California tends to get large, high pressure airmasses that form up in the high deserts - the Mojave, etc.  These things can sit up there, and the air from them starts pushing itself south towards the lower pressure areas in the valleys, the L.A. basin, etc.

 

So what happens is you have a lot of dry air moving from the deserts south and west into the valleys and the basins.  This sets up your classic tinderbox...the air and heat dry out plants, then when something does ignite, the dry air just feeds it.  Out here they call it the Santa Ana wind.

 

This year has a chance to be particularly bad, because of all the rain this area got last winter.  It got so much rain that it fed a lot of plant growth during the rainy season, and then all those plants got to spend the summer drying out.  There's a ton of brush up in those mountains that has the potential to burn off this year if the winds stay favorable.

 

Just out of curiosity, do you think this is something that has been happening for 1000's of years, a natural burning for arguments sake, or do you think this is happening due to human error and presence?

 

IIRC when Yellowstone had that fire (late 80s? early 90's?), after the fact most scientists were saying that this was a good thing. A clearing of the old to make way for the young, if you will.

Just out of curiosity, do you think this is something that has been happening for 1000's of years, a natural burning for arguments sake, or do you think this is happening due to human error and presence?

 

IIRC when Yellowstone had that fire (late 80s?  early 90's?), after the fact most scientists were saying that this was a good thing.  A clearing of the old to make way for the young, if you will.

A lot of the actual fire ignitions are due to people...i.e. a car flicking a cigarette out the window or something like that, but this condition has existed since these circulation patterns and precipitation patterns were established after the last ice age ended. It might have even existed then...I don't know my late Pleistocene LA Basin rainfall that well, although I think it might have been higher.

 

So yeah, this is a natural phenomenon. It's due to the wind, the climate, and the growht of vegetation.

 

And yea, Yellowstone usually has a fire that large every few hundred years, although I think that there was something interesting about that fire in that it moved more quickly than most of them...because humans had been keeping smaller fires from burning off some of the underbrush for the better part of a century, there was a surplus of kindling built up compared to what is usually there. That allowed the fire to spread more quickly than usual, so it basically just raced through the park and killed trees, when previous fires had a tendency to more fully consume the fuel from the older trees that they killed.

I don't know my late Pleistocene LA Basin rainfall that well, although I think it might have been higher.

 

I think you should study up before you go around making wild assumptions

I think you should study up before you go around making wild assumptions

Actually it's not entirely a wild assumption...I've at least visited 1 spot up in the Mojave that was a full lake about 100 ka. It was filled by the Mojave river, which had a much higher flow rate at the time than it currently does. I just don't know when the rainfall values started to change.

 

Hehehehe.

Actually it's not entirely a wild assumption...I've at least visited 1 spot up in the Mojave that was a full lake about 100 ka.  It was filled by the Mojave river, which had a much higher flow rate at the time than it currently does.  I just don't know when the rainfall values started to change.

 

Hehehehe.

COME ON! Get with it and figure it out!

Just out of curiosity, do you think this is something that has been happening for 1000's of years, a natural burning for arguments sake, or do you think this is happening due to human error and presence?

 

IIRC when Yellowstone had that fire (late 80s?  early 90's?), after the fact most scientists were saying that this was a good thing.  A clearing of the old to make way for the young, if you will.

Its part of the chaperal environment. Most of the area in this region is basically an area where fires happen naturally and burn out. It just happens that now we notice it because homes are in this region.

 

This has zero to do with humans and everything to do with natures cycle. The fires put nutrients back into the earth and a new cycle begins and 10-20 years down the road (sometimes sooner or later) the fires will be back in those areas.

 

Now you do have the ocassional fire started by someone throwing out a cigarette butt, etc, but the basis of the problem is the plants dry up becoming freaking tinder boxes (like Balta said) and than you get the santa ana winds coming in (which help dry out and than spread the fire).

There is still a fire going on here in the Burbank Hills. Me and my buddy just went up there and shot some video footage. Didn't get the best shots, but it was still cool. Obviously we couln't get thaht close, but still...

There is still a fire going on here in the Burbank Hills. Me and my buddy just went up there and shot some video footage. Didn't get the best shots, but it was still cool. Obviously we couln't get thaht close, but still...

If the Sox play down in Anaheim you gonna make it down by any chance for a game??