SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — A boom with a lightning strike in the night captivated San Diegans during a recent storm. National Weather Service Meteorologist Alex Tardy says we continue to see rapid changes in temperatures and patterns this season.
"We are going to be on a roller coaster of weather so to speak for the next couple days. Now, we are just dealing with the ups and downs of kind of the normal fall weather. Hot weather, going to cool cloudy weather early next week," said Tardy, a warning coordination meteorologist.
While tracking an 8 to 14 precipitation outlook for our region, some light rain is expected, but that's not stopping current dry conditions from keeping firefighters on alert.
"We still have a significant potential for today, and even through this next week when we see this moisture which will bring down the potential just a little bit,” said CalFire Capt. Thomas Shoots.
Shoots says firefighters expect Santa Ana wind events every October.
"We know historically, 2003 and 2007 are our two worst fires here in San Diego County both happened during the third week of October, and that's because everything was so incredibly dry,” Shoots said.
Not taking any chances, CalFire remains at peak staffing and had its aircraft up early.
"We also brought an extra crews for yesterday and today to make sure that we supplement, just in case that we do have something start," Shoots said.
For the cooler weather we're to see, Alex Tardy says that could be due to La Niña down in the equatorial ocean south of Hawaii,
"We are in a cold phase in that region in the tropics, and it is the opposite of El Niño which is the warm phase,” Tardy said.
In a La Niña, San Diego could see even drier conditions, so Tardy says our recent storms were helpful.
"There could've been one or two fires that got out of control if we haven't had that, those two soaking rain,” Tardy said.
Shoots says the rain that we had last week was great and it bought us a little bit of time, but it was followed by hot, dry and windy days, and really that rain has already been undone.
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