The weather factors that triggered L.A. County’s devastating fires

Los Angeles County is experiencing a once-in-a-generation wildfire event, spurred on by a once-in-a-decade windstorm. Since Southern California was located somewhere near 6:30 on this imaginary clock face, the result was winds traveling from east to west — the opposite of their normal direction. These hurricane-force winds, combined with the unusually dry conditions, led to the unprecedented explosion of wildfires across L.A. County as even the tiniest spark was rapidly fanned into an inferno. But if the jet stream starts to twist and turn like a winding river, it produces powerful high- and low-pressure systems that are responsible for heat waves, snowstorms, floods and strong winds. Worryingly, some scientists believe that climate change could produce a more “curvy” jet stream, which would lead to more instances of back-to-back disasters like the U.S. is experiencing now and like the world experienced during the summer of 2021, when heat waves and floods seemed to ricochet across the globe.