California Burns Tragically, Winter Settles In Further East

The news out of California kept getting worse and worse all day Friday as immense wildfires kept chewing their way across parts of that state.

Malibu,  California on Friday. Photo by Grant Denham,
@GrantDenham on Twitter.

I started the day fearing they would find bodies in the zone affected by the Camp Fire in northern California, which destroyed the town of Paradise.

The fire moved in so fast that people couldn't get out of the way in time. At last report, nine people had died in that fire.

Five people were found burned to death in cars. They were trying to flee and got caught in the firestorm. Local officials say they will probably find more casualties. It's all so sad.

There's some videos of the fires at the bottom of this post you should watch.

I mentioned this trend of increasingly destructive wildfires yesterday, and true to form, the Camp Fire is now the most destructive wildfire in California history, claiming more than 6,700 structures so far. The previous record for most destructive wildfire in California was set just last year.

This fire will continue growing as the weather is not giving anyone a break Gusty winds and very low humidity will keep the Camp Fire spreading. It was only 5 percent contained at last report, and spreading into the city of Chico, population 90,000.

It was just as bad in southern California, where fires were chewing through many homes, especially around Thousand Oaks and in ritzy Malibu, which has been entirely evacuated.

Homes and mansions are going up in flames there. The weather forecast for southern California today is even worse than in the north. Lots of wind gusts today and tomorrow, with the relative humidity staying right around 5 percent - bone dry.

At least 75,000 homes have been evacuated in southern California. Statewide, the figure is 250,000 homes evacuated. You can imagine the kind of chaos that created. Where are all those people going to go? As the fires spread, more evacuations are inevitable.

Fire crews are exhausted. There's not enough people to deal with all these blazes. Some firefighters have reportedly been working 36 hours straight. You can't be effective working such long hours, so this disaster is just going to grind on as long as the weather remains terribly dry.

A hellscape look to California. This is Zuma Beach near Malibu.
Smoke turns the sky red. Horses, llamas and other animals were
brought here to get them away from the wildfires raging
through the region. Photo by @WallySkalij   from LATimes

By this time of year, wet Pacific Ocean storms begin to affect California, at least northern parts of the state. Over the next seven days, sprinkles might affect the extreme northwest corner of California, but the rest of the state is expected to remain bone dry.

WINTRY EAST

Things aren't nearly so dire in the rest of the nation, but the weather pattern that's helping to create the fiery hell in California is contributing to an early blast of winter across the eastern two thirds of the nation.

A strong northward bulge in the jet stream is keeping California hot and terribly dry and steering storms away from the West Coast. Downstream from this ridge is the inevitable dip, or trough in the jet stream.  That's opened the door to record cold and large areas of snow from the Great Plains east to New England.

Temperatures this morning were in the single numbers in parts of North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. Some towns in this region actually got below freezing.

 Freeze warnings extended in a broad band from Oklahoma to South Carolina.  Snow will fall as far south as Oklahoma and Texas Monday. This after a broad band of snow extended from Kansas and into Illinois and Michigan Friday.

The seasonal lake effect snow machine cranked right up with this cold blast. Up to a foot of snow might fall downstream of the lakes, especially in western New York. Dunkirk, New York, south of Buffalo reported a thunderstorm with heavy snow at 7 a.m. this morning.

The cold, snowy, wintry weather will continue in most of the eastern half of the country for the better part of next week.

Here in Vermont, winter is settling in, too, at least for now. One to four inches of wet snow fell on a number of communities, mostly above 1,000 feet in elevation, yesterday and last night. Mountain snow showers will continue today.

We'll have to watch another cold front this afternoon and evening across the northern  half of Vermont. This front could touch off some snow squalls. They will be hit and miss, but have the potential to briefly drop visibility to near zero, ice up the roads really quickly and produce wind gusts to 45 mph.

So be careful on the roads. Yes, it's getting to be that time of year.

Sunday will be a decent day in Vermont - by January standards. High temperatures will only be in the 25 to 35 degree range, and wind chills will be in the upper teens and 20s.

We're still watching a storm for Tuesday. As of this writing, some indications are pointing to a slightly "warmer" storm than first thought. That would increase the chances of a cold rain rather than heavy snow, at least in the lower elevations. There's still a lot of uncertainty with this storm, so be prepared for anything.

Midwinter condition will continue on into Wednesday and Thursday of next week.

Here's another scary video of somebody trying to flee the wildfires and having drive right through the flames. This one is in Malibu:



In this video, with an understandably breathless reporter narrating, homes burn in a neighborhood while firefighters try to spray curtains of water between flaming buildings and still-standing homes to stop the fire from spreading. As you can see with all the wind, this is one tough job:



A haunting scene of abandoned vehicles belonging to people who were trying to flee the Camp Fire in Paradise, California: