SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — With very little rain over the past couple months, it's an unusually dry start to the rainy season in San Diego County, and that's raising wildfire concerns.
“Right now we’re at a critical level. It’s been hot, it’s been dry," said CAL FIRE San Diego Captain Mike Cornette. "We’ve had a couple little rains here and there, but nothing to get that fuel moisture up above critical.”
With hardly any rain in October and just over a tenth of an inch in November, we're on the dry side across the county in the peak of fire season.
“Typically we see a couple rain systems come through," Cornette said. "This particular season we haven’t seen anything yet this year that has been measurable to get us up and out of this high fire danger.”
Cornette told CBS 8 CAL FIRE measures and monitors vegetation and fuel moistures throughout the region, and that fuel moisture levels are currently critical.
“We need a prolonged steady rain to make sure that all those fuel moistures are up to a level where we can feel safe,” said Captain Cornette.
Another factor drying things out this time of year is the Santa Ana winds, which we’ll see more of Thursday and Friday through inland canyons.
“Anytime the winds blow, we get some relatively low humidity values that can definitely create elevated fire dangers,” said Adam Roser, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service San Diego.
“San Diego’s received 0.13 inches of rain so far since October 1, so not very much.”
To compare, last year we had two-thirds of an inch of rain by this time, and the year before that we were already over an inch from October 1 through December 2. In 2004, we were over 5 inches at this point.
“We’re just abnormally dry for now, but we’ve noticed that some of these stronger categories, these more extreme drought categories are starting to creep into California, so we’ve seen the drying trend continue," Roser said.
CAL FIRE is monitoring the risk closely with the dry fuel conditions and potential for more Santa Anas on the way.
So far, it does not appear that a red flag warning will be issued.