El Nino…. Brush fire? (San Diego, Santa Ana: 2015, train, activity)

[sourdough]

101 Freeway N.of Ventura is closed right now and coast route train traffic is also stopped due to a brush fire in the hillsides next to the Hwy. This was suppose to be the winter of wet not FIRE! http://ktla.com/2015/12/26/solimar-f...reeway-closed/
Highway 101 Shut Down by Wind-Whipped Brush Fire Raging South of Carpinteria

[saibot]

This is not just winter, it is the Santa Ana wind season. These dry winds exacerbate brush fires. Very typical and normal. I blame the media for leading people to believe "El Nino" means it will rain every single day all winter long.

[bornincali]

Better to burn now than next summer! Fire at this time of year is far less destructive to these chaparral habitats.

[Snort]

Just drove down through here and noticed how dry it was. Same thing in San Diego County. El Niño is supposed to kick in sometime in January.

[NativeOrange]

If El Niño brings lots of rain, it just means more fuel for fires next year.

This is probably the 1 and only time you will catch me being a pessimist.

[bornincali]

Nativeorange: That depends on the prevailing summer weather conditions...but their will definitely be more fuel on the ground from the longer grower season.


Note that historically fires in the chaparral round these parts were quite rare(every 50 years or so I recall). Invasive grasses and human activity promoting fires to actually start really increases the number of resulting wildfires.


It is interesting to hike sycamore canyon and observe how everything is coming back after that area burned.

[509]

Originally Posted by bornincali

Note that historically fires in the chaparral round these parts were quite rare(every 50 years or so I recall). Invasive grasses and human activity promoting fires to actually start really increases the number of resulting wildfires.

Do you have the source for the fire interval in historic times??

[bornincali]

Fire Ecology - Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)

Citations below...70-100 years between burns for any one area. Not sure if this makes sense...does not mean their will only be fires every 70 years but if a piece of land burns on average it once took that long before it burned again. So any given plot would probably burn once in a lifetime. A different story these days on dry grassy hills.

Before man, lightning strike was the only real way that fires started. Nowadays these fires are mostly human caused. The vast majority...even if we can't pinpoint causes...start near roads or areas of human activity.

[509]

thanks...for the link.

I found this one from the Forest Service which is also interesting reading: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publication...Management.pdf

Interesting that historically some lightning fires held over until the Santa Ana's blew and that large fires were common back then.

[bornincali]

The takeaway seems to be that the rare crazy inferno is going to happen sooner or later. That is unfortunate because i think those fires are the ones with the highest risk of damage compared to the small fires that we are adding on.