Hollywood actors including Chris Pratt and Josh Gad have praised the “brave firefighters” working to contain the wildfires.
In a message to his more than 45m followers on Instagram, Guardians Of The Galaxy star Pratt, 45, urged people to “send prayers and strength” to those affected.
He continued: “Thank you to the brave firefighters and first responders who are working tirelessly to protect lives, homes, and wildlife…
“You are true heroes, and we are endlessly grateful for your sacrifice and courage.”
Actor Josh Gad, who voices Olaf in the Frozen films, shared a video showing a blaze ripping through a hillside and said he had “never seen flames from my house like this”.
The 43-year-old also praised the “brave” firefighters and police officers working to try and keep people safe.
As we reported earlier (see 7.18am post), Star Wars actor Mark Hamill was evacuated from his home in Malibu.
“Most horrific fire since ’93. Stay safe,” he said on Instagram.
California gets federal funding
The governor of California has confirmed the state has received federal funding to deal with the wildfires.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency helps people before, during and after disasters.
There’s no detail yet on how much funding has been sent to California.
100mph winds spreading fire
Winds of up to 100mph have been fuelling one of the blazes in Los Angeles, a fire official has told Sky News.
Margaret Stewart, the public information officer at the LA Fire Department, said the Sylmar fire was already 300 acres in size, and had a rapid rate of growth “because right now we have these extreme winds gusting 50 to 80mph, up to 100mph”.
All of fires are affected by winds, but wind speeds have been highest there.
She added the winds were “driving very dangerous dynamic fire behaviour” and that it limited their ability to tackle them.
“These winds have our air support grounded at the time at this time. They’re not able to operate under winds to this severity.”
She noted that the three fires had caused civilian and firefighters injuries, but there were no reports of fatalities at this time.
Explained: The winds exacerbating the fires
Southern California is obviously a dry area and prone to wildfires, but in this instance the fire developed and spread very rapidly due to what are known as Santa Ana winds.
These are just one named example of a class of generally strong downslope winds to the lee (and hence in the rain shadow) of a mountain range, generically known as Foehn winds, and including for example the Mistral over southern France, the Chinook over the Rockies and the Scirocco over Sardinia.
Such winds are characterised by being warm, due to compressive heating of the air coming down, and dry, as water vapour has generally been rained out when the air was lifted in the first place.
It’s worth noting that the Foehn effect is the reason for relatively high temperatures over Aberdeen and around Moray, when winds blow across the Grampians from the south and east.
In this instance, the winds are being driven by high pressure to the northeast of the area, and low pressure to the south, with the winds peaking later today, before easing fairly rapidly thereafter as the low pressure to the south eases away.
‘No water in the fire hydrants’
In one part of California, firefighters cited by the LA Times have said there is no water in the hydrants needed to tackle the blazes.
Hydrants in Pacific Palisades were coming up dry, the paper reported.
“The hydrants are down,” said one firefighter.
“Water supply just dropped,” said another.
A local developer said: “The firefighters are there and there’s nothing they can do – we’ve got neighbourhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning… it should never happen.”
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