A Santa Ana wind storm with gusts up to 92 mph in some areas is lashing San Diego County, creating a high potential for wildfires in a region where vegetation is drier than it has been in years.
Through 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, San Diego Gas & Electric had preemptively shut off power to nearly 51,000 households across eastern parts of the county, from the backcountry west to the Escondido and Poway areas, and and schools were closed in 10 school districts across the county’s vast backcountry. The number of power outages is expected to grow.
At least five big rigs on Interstate 8 in East County were blown over by strong gusts shortly before 7 a.m. The winds prompted the California Highway Patrol to initially close the eastbound lanes of Interstate 8, at Alpine, to all traffic. By 9:30 a.m., officers were allowing cars and other low-profile vehicles through but keeping big-rigs and high-profile vehicles off the freeway.
“There is no estimated time for reopening,” the CHP said in a statement on social media. “Expect significant delays and avoid the area if possible.”
A CHP spokesperson said officials planned to shut down westbound I-8 to traffic coming out of Imperial County because of the dangerous driving conditions. It was unclear when travel on the freeway would resume.
Doug Aguillard, a videographer for OnScene.TV, said he saw four of the big rigs that crashed Tuesday. “This is just nuts,” he said. “These truckers won’t stop… It is not even gusts. It is just constant.”
Shortly after 4:15 a.m., as winds were kicking up, firefighters responded to a brush fire on Rangeland Road north of Highland Valley Road in the Ramona area.
The fire, pushed by winds and burning in a grassy area, ran into a riparian creek area where its progress slowed and firefighters were able to gain the upper hand, said Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette.
“We were able to slow it down enough to get it stopped,” Cornette said. “We got really lucky.”
The fire ended up charring less than 2 acres, he said.
The National Weather Service reported gusts of 92 mph at Sill Hill east of Ramona, 80 mph at Hauser Mountain near Campo, 71 mph at Otay Mountain near Chula Vista, 62 mph in Santa Ysabel near Julian, 55 mph in Descanso, 38 mph at Palomar Mountain and 35 mph at Julian.
The gusts were blowing hardest through canyons that carry the wind from the desert to the sea. Other areas were mostly calm. At 8:15 a.m., only a light breeze was blowing in Otay Ranch, about 6 miles west of Otay Mountain.
“The winds are peaking right now,” said John Suk, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s San Diego office. “They will slowly drop through out the day. But it will still be breezy on Wednesday, and there will be some rain on Thursday.
“The relative humidity has dropped into the teens in parts of the county. So all the ingredients are there for the red flag fire weather warning we issued” for areas east of Interstate 15.
In a rarity, SDG&E had warned more than 117,000 customers over the weekend that it might temporarily shut off their power to reduce the threat of wildfires, and that outages could last a day or more. It calls such outages public safety power shutoffs — de-energizing power lines to reduce the risk that high winds could knock them down into dry vegetation and spark a wildfire.
It began to follow through on that warning Monday, leading to outages in more than 40 communities, including Alpine, Julian, El Cajon, Escondido, Lakeside and Ramona.
“The winter rains just haven’t shown up, and it’s creating some very critical fire weather conditions this year,” said Brian D’Agostino, SDG&E’s vice president of wildfire and climate science.
The potential for damage is also high because the winds were expected to be unusually strong, and the relative humidity will be very low. Winds could gust upwards of 70 mph in the mountains, 50 mph to 60 mph along parts of Interstates 8 and 15, up to 40 mph on state Route 76 and 30 mph at the coast.
Some of the strongest gusts were likely to follow a corridor from the Ramona and Escondido areas all the way to Encinitas and Del Mar. Winds were also expected to sweep across Camp Pendleton and along a stretch of I-8 east of Alpine that’s well-known for wind-related traffic accidents.
As a precaution, schools were closed Tuesday in 10 rural districts: Dehesa, Jamul-Dulzura, Julian Elementary, Julian High, Mountain Empire, Ramona Unified, Spencer Valley, Vallecitos, Valley Center-Pauma and Warner Unified.
The potential for widespread fires hasn’t been this high since the first week of December 2020, when fire broke out across many areas of the county.
“The highest-risk areas for this particular event … are going to develop (in) areas above 3,000 feet,” D’Agostino told reporters Monday morning, adding that gusts are expected to blow through wide stretches of rural and backcountry areas carpeted with chaparral, one of the country’s most flammable kinds of vegetation.
“As we head up Boulder Creek Road towards the western slopes of Cuyamaca, we think winds there could easily hit hurricane force through this event,” D’Agostino said.
Last month, Santa Ana winds that reached 50 mph led to 1,263 SDG&E customers losing power — but this incoming wind storm appeared to be much stronger. The utility has already warned about five times the number of customers of potential outages from this series of Santa Anas.
“This is actually the highest fire potential we have seen in San Diego County in six years,” D’Agostino said. “We have to go back to the peak of our fire season in 2018,” he added, in order to see the last event that “scored this high in terms of our large fire potential for our region.”
The National Weather Service has issued a red-flag fire warning that will be in effect through early Wednesday east of I-15 in San Diego County. Forecasters expected relative humidity to fall to as low as 5%.
Such conditions are conducive to the spread of wildfire — especially since the area has received only a fraction of its typical seasonal rainfall.
Forecasters say the county is unlikely to get appreciable rain through Dec. 15, and probably through Christmas.
California has had several rain events since early November, but the storms have largely remained in the northern part of the state. Forecast models suggest that trend could last into January.
SDG&E officials say that homeowners should bring outdoor patio furniture inside to reduce the risk of items such as chairs and umbrellas going airborne and making contact with power lines.
Affected customers should prepare for outages that could last for multiple days, especially in areas in mountain foothills, D’Agostino said.
“Damage that is seen on the electric system in many areas (is) going to require helicopters to patrol over different canyons where we can’t get to it by foot” to eventually restore power, he said.
