Parts of California face Thanksgiving power outages

Edison International is preparing to potentially cut power to 70,000 customers on Thanksgiving Day, mostly in the mountains of Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, according to the power company’s website.

Southern California Edison spokeswoman Taelor Bakewell told Bloomberg News the power would likely be cut until Friday night.

Power outages are not planned for central or northern California.

Strong northeast winds, aka the Santa Ana winds, are expected to trigger Thanksgiving Day and persist late Friday night across much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Winds will reach peak speeds Thursday night through Friday morning, with gusts of up to 60 mph in the mountains, up to 50 mph in valleys and up to 45 mph along the coast.

Humidity levels will drop to 10-25% on Thursday and some local spots on Friday could dip into single-digit numbers.

Meanwhile, dry and mild weather is forecast for northern California, including the Bay Area, with 60s prevalent on Thursday afternoon.

A handful of storms have passed over California in recent weeks, bringing good amounts of rain to the northern reaches of California and accumulating snow in the northern Sierra Nevada range. But the systems have not provided the widespread rain that the state desperately needs to cushion the landscape and reduce the risk of wildfires.

“In wetter places, this precipitation may very well be considered ‘the end of the fire season’ – and rains elsewhere have significantly reduced the risk of forest fires.” Daniel Swain, a climatologist at UC Los Angeles, wrote on his blog Weather West. “But real late-season rains have yet to arrive in parts of NorCal, and certainly not yet in most of SoCal.”

Swain noted that fall 2020 is on track to rank among the driest top five on record in much of California.

“This comes immediately after the hottest August-October period on record in California,” Swain wrote.

In short, the wildfire season is not over.