California Heat Wave: Records continue to fall as fire danger grows

Tracking a significant pattern change as well as breezy conditions bringing us an elevated fire danger. I'm ABC 10 chief meteorologist Monica Woods and we are on the tail end of what has been an oppressive heat stretch. Unfortunately, we've also been dealing with some lightning and some lightning sparked fires. This one is the gold uh complex fire in Plumas County. Now, you can see the location just north of the Tahoe Basin and that is going to continue to be something that firefighters are trying to aggressively, especially in the background of the heat that we've been dealing with with all the dried out fuel. So those fires spreading rather quickly, especially also that we've been dealing with numerous thunderstorms, those outflow boundaries, creating those wind shifts and the wind that's also going to be elevating that fire danger and through tomorrow. So today is really the day to get the upper hand on that fire there. As you can see, the lightning strikes have mainly been east of the Crest. We had a cluster around the Yosemite area in the central Sierra. Most of this quieting down for tonight. Good there because that big plume of moisture has been really surging up through the Sierra Spine in the past couple of days. As far as tomorrow's forecast, most of those showers and thunderstorms just eased to the crest once again. But a long 395 dealing with periods of some difficult travel, especially in those heavy downpours. Now, this will be about the tail end of that action as well as we start to track this pattern shift again. This low coming in from the Pacific is what's going to be changing that really oppressive high pressure ridge that's been over us, bringing the excessive heat throughout the valley, numerous records falling. But we've got one more day with this heat advisory in play throughout the valley and towards the coastal range as well. Wednesday evening is when that expires highs tomorrow though still from 102 to 110 heat and illness, still very possible. Modifying outdoor activities can certainly help to limit the potential for some of those heat illnesses. As far as our almanac for today, it was a warm start to the day near 80 for downtown South Creo that got us to 110 degrees just one degree shy of tying the record for the day 107 for Sacramento executive starting the day off at 75 Stockton, our high 109 and Modesto 108 as we travel through the northern San Joaquin Valley again, very warm overnight lows, but that 110 degree day for downtown Sacramento will add to the heat record that we already actually broke on July 12th when we hit our four day at 110 degrees. Today, the fifth day. Now, the previous record was set a couple of times at three days in 1925 1996 2021 and 2022 when we had three days at 110 degrees for the year. Today, we marked our fifth for 2024. And again, we still have August to go, which can be a very hot month and the all time record high. By the way for downtown Sacramento was hit in September just a couple of years ago. So it's very possible we could be adding to that number right there. Here's the rundown and you can see the month, the month of June and July very, very hot highs were ranging in the one hundreds starting in June and then we had a couple of breaks in there. But overall, most of this map is covered in the deep one hundreds, 26 days above average. As far as July heat alone, our average high so far 104.3 degrees, the average low so far 67.8. Here's the normal averages 94.5 for the month. We are 10 degrees above that. And as far as that low contributing to some of the heat illness that we've had to deal with over the past couple of weeks here. Normal average low 61.6. Unfortunately, we've had two heat related deaths so far this year. A lot of that comes in play because of those overnight lows being so warm. Our bodies just aren't getting the break overnight that we would normally get average lows typically run in the upper fifties. So we are sitting well above that. Well, the one hundreds they are back as you can see, we started off with morning lows in the seventies and now we're warming those highs into the one hundreds. So one more day of this sunrise, 601, our sunset at 823 it certainly is nice when that sun goes down and we start to get in just a little trickle of a breeze, but that breeze is gonna be much more significant even in the next 24 hours. So the next 24 to 48 hour period is when we're going to have elevated fire danger due to the increasing winds. We've got two lows that are going to be working in conjunction with each other to really amplify some of those winds coming in from the Pacific. So that weather impact alert headline is going to largely focus on the increasing winds as well as the elevated fire danger Wednesday into Thursday for the valley, the foothills and the delta. That breeze will be nice because it will start to kind of shift things around a little bit for us. But again, right through the coastal range, through the west side of the valley, and then the delta is where we're going to see the most significant risk of those winds elevating the fire danger. And then we repeat that again on Thursday. Here's a look at our significant fire potential for Wednesday. We're still at high risk because of the thunderstorms, the abundant lightning gusty winds and that is especially true on that northeast corner of California. Here's a look at the energy release component for the valley and the parts of the foothills. You can see how we're still running in that extreme burn potential. We will see some cooler weather. So the forecast is going to hold for this coming down just a little bit with our current energy release component sitting at 71.50%. And that's gonna keep us in that threshold there for extreme burn potential at least for the time being until we get that cooler weather coming our way, fire season comparisons. And this is as of today, we are well ahead pace of what we were last year at this point, we only had 22,000 acres burned. We are over 275,000 acres burned. So 22,000 acres about a year to date last year, over 275,000 this year. Uh not so much of a significant difference for the fires burning. But as far as the acreage again, two wet years, very little fuel burned last year means a lot to burn this year. As far as, uh, the five year average, we're ahead of that pace as well. We're pretty close to what we usually average within a month of fires, but the acreage is nearly double of what we usually see at this point in the year. So preventing a spark, keep in mind mowing lawns, not dry grass, also, metal plus rocks equal sparks and then chains make sure they're secure. This is a big time to do some traveling. Perhaps you got a trailer behind you or you're just doing some yard work and maybe you got a, you know, a trailer behind just uh trailing some of that equipment and just make sure that uh those chains are secure. Again, our winds for tomorrow are really going to come in quite significantly during the afternoon with our temperatures that have been holding in the one hundreds with 26 days above the average. That means that we have been having a long stretch of this type of heat. Knowing the signs of those heat, illnesses is really critical time and time again. I've been out at different events and I've been seeing one person or another go down. I almost fell victim to it myself on Saturday. It really kind of sneaks up. I've been asking our reporters as well who are out reporting on just even different stories than the heat. And they said, yeah, it just kind of sneaks up on you as you, uh, spend more and more time outside. So, if you're thirsty, dizzy, nausea, nauseated, that's kind of in that heat exhaustion category as well as cool clammy skin sweating a lot. Now, when it takes a step in the wrong direction, meaning it becomes a bit more severe. That's heat stroke, headache, red, hot, dry skin and no sweating. That is a situation call 911. I wanna get that person immediate emergency attention. All right, the good news here is we will see some relief. We're coming out of that heat risk category. So we're no longer that major and extreme category by the weekend. In fact, we start to cool below average. We haven't seen eighties in a stretch like this since the middle of June. So we're still near 100 for the state fair forecast on Thursday, Friday. We dropped to the low one hundreds and then we're in the eighties, Saturday and Sunday and you can see it here. Our contour is starting to shift out of the orange and into the blue. Nice to see that big poll from the Pacific bringing us a nice break in this heat. It's all courtesy of that low that's moving its way in from the Pacific and again, a little low just off the co co coast here, which will really start to suppress that high kind of move it off to the east. So that's making a return to the eighties for us. Our average monthly high temperature actually starts to decrease. So we've passed the peak where we see our average high around 95 degrees and month by month, we kind of chip away at those a high getting us back to near 90 by the time we get to September. Now I say that and then our climate prediction center is saying in the next 8 to 14 day climate outlook, it looks likely warmer and add to that, we actually have a slight risk of excessive heat for the first week of August. So we're almost there just not quite yet highs in the eighties for tomorrow for this year with the nineties and one hundreds in the foothills and we're still tracking highs in the seventies along the coast as well as nineties inland, close to 100. Still, even with that trickle of an onshore flow, 100 is widespread throughout the valley for our Wednesday forecast, but that's gonna be about it as far as the widespread one hundreds. We're in the eighties for this year or tomorrow tracking that slight chance of thunderstorms cooler for the weekend and dry highs will be close to 100 tomorrow for the foothills. And then we start to drop our highs into the nineties eventually into the eighties this weekend for the coast. We're calling for highs in the seventies tomorrow and then it's sixties with quite a bit of low cloudiness. On Saturday. Weather impact alert will stay in play for our Wednesday forecast. And then we start to drop those temperatures and that'll get us back into the eighties for Saturday and Sunday. And like I said, this is going to be short lived because we're back into the one hundreds by next week as we kick off the new month, but it's lower. 100 not quite as oppressive as what we've been seeing. So we'll see that nice stretch of eighties over the weekend. Kind of perfect timing for all this. You can get more in depth forecast and explainers, weather specials, just like what we've been seeing. Our Emmy award winning weather special. The future of California's Water is on our ABC 10 Plus app. You can download that, watch it for free on Apple TV, Roku and Fire TV.