Malibu Red Flag Alert: 40-Plus-mph Winds and Temps in the 80s

BY HANS LAETZ

Malibu weather has always been somewhat topsy-turvy, with frequent hot winds in the winter and cool fog in the springtime. With that in mind, this week’s hot and dry winds left the weather forecaster explaining the weird conditions as “a pattern of heat and dryness that we usually don’t have this late in the spring.”

Confused?

There is no other explanation for a reading of 83 degrees at Leo Carrillo State Beach last Sunday, when the normal high for the date is in the 60s, said weather specialist Stuart Seto at the Oxnard National Weather Service office.

“These strong offshore winds are a weather pattern that we usually don’t see much of after March, and surely not in May,” Seto said.

The pattern was all too familiar to Malibu residents. The Santa Ana winds that normally trail off in January just haven’t let up this year.

“I don’t like it at all,” said Point Dume resident Dawn Randall. “I want a little bit of a change of seasons.”

“I went up to Camarillo to run errands because it was too hot to walk on the beach,” said west Malibu resident Joni Efros. But she was quick to add that she wasn’t complaining: “I try not to have too many expectations.”

Winds Sunday maxed out at 64 miles per hour at Laguna Peak, just above Pacific Coast Highway at Point Mugu. Winds at a measuring station above Malibu were clocked at 46 mph, and, along the Malibu beaches, they frequently exceeded 30 mph on Sunday morning.

Humidity readings dropped to 5 percent at places that normally see 99 percent humidity on May mornings, part of a fire weather combination of heat, wind and dryness that triggered official red flag alerts.

Los Angeles County firefighters responded to the red flag warning by moving a strike team drawn from various Los Angeles-area stations to Agoura Hills. Five firetrucks staffed by 20 firefighters went onto temporary duty in the western part of the county as part of that move-up, along with 19 extra patrol trucks, nine water tankers, a bulldozer team and two helicopter tender units.

A similar chess move last January was credited by experts as being the crucial difference in stopping the fast-moving fire that demolished six houses along Malibu Road. The fire’s spread to the east and west along the Malibu bluff was prevented by the strike team after it crossed through Malibu Canyon.

“We just have to prepare for what has become a never-ending fire season,” said county fire inspector Ed Lozano. “Generally when we get five-to-six inches of rain in a season, we can call the fire season off.

“This year, we got three-and-a-half.”

The burn index, a mathematical formula that computes the weather and the condition of brush, stood at 88 early this week. “You divide that by 10 and that’s the average flame height we can expect in a brushfire,” Lozano said.

High winds diminished somewhat Monday, but not the red flag warnings. “It’s not just high winds that trigger fire weather,” said the weather bureau’s Seto. “It can also be a combination of very low humidity and high temperatures, which is exactly what we’ve got.”

Of course, not everyone objects to the hot weather. “I love it,” exulted Latigo Canyon resident Jon Gindick. “The heat and the solar energy heats up my pool that much better.”