Full story: What Wildfire Season?

What Wildfire Season?

by Tim Ballisty, Editorial Meteorologist'Tis the season for wildfires to ignite in southern California.

This is the time of year when gusty Santa Ana winds pick up in intensity and blow a warm, very dry air mass into the valley and coastal areas of SoCal.

Santa Ana's help to spark and then fuel destructive wildfires. In previous Octobers, wildfires in SoCal would be numbered in the dozens by this point.

It was just last year (nearly to the day) when the famous Station Wildfire was finally extinguished after thriving for 3 weeks.

But 2009 is not 2010, that's for sure. There are currently 3 wildfires in the entire United States and not one of them is burning in the state of California.

As recently as less than two weeks ago, rain and t-storms erupted over southern California and the Desert Southwest helping to wet the grounds.

Now halfway through October and the Southwest is preparing for yet another wet encounter thanks to a cutoff upper-level low spinning near central California.

A cutoff low is a storm system is that is cut off from the main atmospheric west-to-east steering flow across the United States.

Because of this, these storms systems typically stall or VERY slowly wobble over an area.

That's exactly what will happen this week.

Cutoff upper low position on Wednesday

Clouds, rain, scattered thunderstorms and cool temperatures will linger over SoCal and the entire Southwest United States through at least Thursday.

This will help to keep the California wildfire season at bay and postpone the start for at least one more week.

Unfortunately, there are some early signs that the weather pattern conducive for the development of Santa Ana winds could take shape before the month of October turns over to November.

The California wildfire season is delayed for now but it will be difficult to completely curtail the season through the remainder of October and all of November.

Let's enjoy the wet, cool and cloudy conditions for now!