page_title: 2007 California wildfires
section_title: Wind and weather
hierarchical_section_title: 2007 California wildfires / Wind and weather
caption_attribution_description: Comparison of the skyline from October 21 (left) and October 22. Taken in Simi Valley, California, during the California wildfires of October 2007. All pictures taken with Canon PowerShot A560. Left—Blue sky with everyday haze. Take note of the Santa Ana winds blowing the trees. Middle—Smoke has reached the vicinity. Winds have calmed briefly. Right—Less smoke than yesterday, but still badly congested. Note the winds.
context_page_description: The 2007 California wildfire season saw at least 9,093 separate wildfires that charred 1,520,362 acres of land. Thirty of those wildfires were part of the Fall 2007 California firestorm, which burned approximately 972,147 acres of land from Santa Barbara County to the U.S.–Mexico border. At the peak of the wildfire activity in October 2007, the raging wildfires were visible from space.
  The wildfires killed a total of 17 people, with nine of them dying directly from the fires; 203 others were injured, including at least 124 firefighters.
  California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in seven California counties where fires were burning. President George W. Bush concurred, and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts. Over 6,000 firefighters worked to fight the blazes; they were aided by units of the United States Armed Forces, United States National Guard, almost 3,000 prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes, and 60 firefighters from the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Tecate. The fires forced approximately 1,000,000 people to evacuate from their homes, becoming the largest evacuation in California's history.
context_section_description: The October 2007 fires occurred following an extremely dry previous winter: in Los Angeles, with only 3.21 inches or 81.5 millimetres of rainfall between July 2006 and June 2007, it was the driest “rain year” on record by 1.14 inches (29.0 mm). The record drought was exacerbated by the seasonal Santa Ana winds, blowing at an abnormally high strength. This combination of wind, heat, and dryness turned the chaparral into fire fuel. Officials believed that some of the fires generated their own winds, similar to the Oakland firestorm of 1991. The effects of the smoke were felt as far away as Brentwood in the East Bay, near Stockton, where it impacted local weather. High-speed Santa Ana winds also rendered the use of dropping water from fire fighting aircraft inefficient: until such winds abate, most payloads of water are just dispersed by the wind over an area so large that the water evaporates before it can reach a large fire on the ground.
  
  The San Diego Union Tribune reported,
  Santa Ana winds blowing up to 60 mph (97 km/h) combined with temperatures into the 90s to create in the worst possible fire conditions.
   At one point, swirling winds threatened to bring fire into densely populated urban areas. At the height of the Santa Ana winds on October 22, sustained wind speeds reached 90 mph (140 km/h), with wind gusts up to 112 mph (180 km/h) reported.
caption: A comparison of the Simi Valley skyline from October 21, 2007 (left and center) to October 22, 2007 (right)
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