Stan Wasowski, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in San Diego just told me there’s another spate of Santa Ana winds on the way to eastern parts of San Diego County.
“We pretty much get these warnings every week,” Wasowski said.
There was quite a lot of fuss a couple of weeks ago, when forecasters warned of a coming windstorm that was likely to hit the county as hard as the storm that stoked this year’s wildfires. In the end, however, those winds hit further north in the state and San Diego was largely left alone.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, rural parts of East County and southern Orange County got some pretty strong winds, Wasowski said. The bulk of the winds hit further north and blew through the Los Angeles basin, he said.
During the smaller-scale windstorms, coastal parts of San Diego can rarely feel the Santa Ana winds, Wasowski said.
This weekend, the county is primed for similar weather to Thanksgiving, said Wasowski. The winds probably won’t be very strong at the coast again, he said, but they should get pretty strong up in the mountains in the east of the county.
“They could get up to 25, 35 miles per hour, with occasional gusts up to 45 miles per hour,” he said.
The high winds will be coupled with low humidity, Wasowski said, creating dangerous fire conditions. The winds should last for about 12 hours, he said.