San Diego County — which is in the midst of one of the driest periods on record — will be lashed by unusually cold and expansive Santa Ana winds early Wednesday that could spark wildfires, snap trees and knock out power, the National Weather Service said.
The enormous wind storm will shoot into Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties on Tuesday morning, then expand into San Diego County, which hasn’t had significant rain since last spring.
The system is so volatile the weather service’s Los Angeles office took the highly unusual step Monday of placing a large, magenta headline on its homepage that read: “Life-threatening & destructive windstorm!!!” Following it was the guidance: “Extreme risk — take immediate action.”
The weather service usually speaks in a much calmer voice.
Forecasters issued a red flag fire weather warning for the area of San Diego County generally east of Interstate 15. The warning will last from 4 a.m. Wednesday to 6 p.m. Thursday and could be extended if the winds persist.
San Diego Gas & Electric has notified nearly 65,000 of its customers that it could temporarily shut off their power to help minimize the risk of sparking wildfires in the high winds. Most of those customers live east of I-15. But there are also many who live at and near the coast, in such communities as Encinitas, Del Mar and Oceanside.
The local outages could begin as early as Tuesday, the utility said.
The Santa Ana winds will also affect customers north of San Diego. Southern California Edison is the investor-owned utility servicing 50,000 square miles within Central, Coastal and Southern California.
As of 1:45 p.m. Monday, Edison’s website said public safety power shutoffs are being considered for more than 294,000 of its customers — primarily in Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and Ventura counties. That’s almost 6% of the customers in Edison’s service territory.
The wind storm comes at a perilous moment. As of Wednesday, this will be the driest start of the rainy season in San Diego since 1850. The city has recorded only 0.14 inches of precipitation, and there’s no significant rain in sight.
Santa Ana winds are usually warm. But the ones arriving before dawn Wednesday will be very cold, because much of the energy is dropping in from Canada. The early-morning temperature in Oceanside could be as low as 34 degrees.
The winds also will be spread over a wider area of the county than usual. They’ll zoom down the face of Palomar Mountain, causing big gusts in places like Escondido and Camp Pendleton, and down Mount Laguna, making it hard to drive on Interstate 8, east of Alpine, forecasters said.
Downtown San Diego could get the kind of wild and wicked gusts that toppled 80- to 90-foot eucalyptus trees in Balboa Park on Jan. 26, 2022.
“Its hard to predict what will happen because the wind will be gusting everywhere,” said Alex Tardy, a weather service forecaster.
The relative humidity also will be a concern. It’s expected to drop below 20% from the mountains to the sea, elevating the risk of wildfire.
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