UCLA Braced For Extreme Santa Ana Winds

UCLA facilities management and emergency operations have been taking necessary steps to mitigate the potentially destructive and life-threatening impacts of extreme Santa Ana winds. UCLA experts have called the weather event "one of the most powerful wind events of the season," and added that the "atmospheric blow dryer" will parch vegetation into ready fuel.

• The UCLA fire team will be working overnight to patrol the campus for any potential fire

  hazards.

• Crews are monitoring for potential fallen trees or branches.
• Events, parking, and transit teams are ensuring that all signage is safely secured for

  tonight's men's basketball home game against the University of Michigan.

Alex Hall, director of the Center for Climate Science at UCLA and director of UCLA's Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, explains how the dangerous winds pose serious threats for wildfires:

• "Today's life-threatening windstorm shows just how quickly extraordinarily dangerous conditions can arise. Southern California has experienced a particularly hot summer, followed by almost no precipitation during what is normally our wet season. And all of this comes on the heels of two very rainy years, which means there is plenty of fuel for potential wildfires. These intense winds have the potential to turn a small spark into a conflagration that eats up thousands of acres with alarming speed — a dynamic that is only intensifying with the warmer temperatures of a changing climate."
• "Whether we like it or not, the nature of wildfire in Southern California is changing, and we must adapt accordingly. That will involve some frank conversations about the trade- offs involved in improving our strategies to reduce ignitions, improve stewardship of our unique chaparral landscapes to reduce impacts and protect human life and property."
• "This is one of the most powerful wind events of the season. Although it is occurring in the heart of what is normally our wet season, we have had no significant precipitation to shut off its ability to spread wildfire quickly. This drives home the point that we must learn to live with wildfire. Our work at UCLA aims to produce solutions-oriented research that can help policymakers prepare our communities and our environment for the realities of a changing climate and make more accurate predictions of wildfire behavior and risk."

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA with expertise in extreme weather, discusses the implications of the windstorm and the risks it poses to Southern California:

• "It really does look like the worst of this is going to be in the middle of the night Tuesday night into the early morning on Wednesday. It will be quite a widespread event, so this will not be like a Santa Ana wind event where it's windy in the mountains and pretty calm in the urban areas — this one is going to be a doozy." (video/audio)
• "The winds are going to reach the valleys, low elevations, even the urban cores, so even downtown L.A., San Fernando Valley. These places are going to see wind gusts probably over 50 mph almost everywhere and perhaps as high as 80 or 90 mph in some cases. And if we get toward the upper end of that range, that's not only going to be posing a fire weather threat but also a threat of some real, substantive damage." (video/audio)
• "The atmospheric blow dryer is really going to dry things out even further, and because this is going to last several days, the vegetation will become progressively dryer the longer the wind event goes on. So some of the strongest winds will be at the beginning of the event, but some of the driest vegetation will actually come at the end, and so the reality is that there's going to be a very long period of high fire risk." (video/audio)
• "This will probably affect more people more substantively than a major rainstorm in many ways. Certain roads will be closed to public access to prevent potential fire ignitions. Hundreds of thousands, if not perhaps over a million people, could end up seeing power outages." (video/audio)

More Daniel Swain TV-ready clips