As the fire in the Pacific Palisades outside of Los Angeles continued to rage on Wednesday, a Fox Weather meteorologist sounded the alarm on the air quality alert warnings in LA proper.
Fox anchor Sandra Smith introduced Fox weather meteorologist and meteorologist Adam Klotz and asked, “What can you tell us, Adam?”
“Well, Sandra, yeah, really, really powerful winds as what we’ve been dealing with so far today you see on the high end, 100 mile-an-hour winds down to 90 mile-an-hour winds. This would continue to fall. We’ve seen winds in the 80s, the 70s, even as we speak, and they’re a little bit lower than those real peaks,” Klotz began, adding:
You’re still looking at really powerful winds gusting at times 40, 50, 60, 70 miles an hour across this entire region. That’s enough to really move these fires very quickly. As we know, all of these in the northern hills, they’re just north of Los Angeles, largely. Here’s where they currently are and taking up huge swaths of this area as these continue to spread, continue to grow.You’re looking at quite large areas there north of Los Angeles where there is at least an order of evacuation or a warning for evacuations where you need to be really paying attention in case you ultimately get that order to get out of those areas. The wind alerts continue
to be in place through Wednesday, so that is through today. We’re looking at wind gusts of 60 to 80 miles an hour here across most of this region.Now, there is a little bit of good news. You’re kind of stuck with it today. But as we begin to get into the overnight hours, they do not go away, but these winds start to back down. You saw those 60, 70 mile-an-hour winds getting down to 10 to 20 miles an hour. Actually, the winds should be slightly less powerful tomorrow than they are today. The problem is they’re still bone dry, but that does improve conditions just a little bit today. You see the fire weather outlook is that extreme, tomorrow it’s still an issue. Still going to be tough to fight, but you’re looking at a critical level so slightly lower as those winds do back down just a little bit. Now, the problem is when we get into Friday, not as strong as today, but those winds do tick back up a little bit. So we’re looking at fire weather alerts from today through all the way through Friday as that air continues to be very dry. And this is a developing portion of this.
“Sandra, I will leave you with it. Air quality alerts continue to be posted at Los Angeles proper. The city itself obviously not seeing the fire downtown,
Fox Weather noted in a report online that “AirNow.gov has marked air quality all around Los Angeles as “hazardous,” the worst possible rating for air quality. It means just about everyone could experience problems from breathing the air.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) announced on X Wednesday that the air quality alerts needed to be followed and urged residents to stay “indoors with windows and doors closed and wearing a properly fit mask.”
Watch the clip above.