06-May-2004, 04:35 PM
The weather is helping out today. there is a forecast drop in temperature's to the mid eighties from the mid nineties, and an increase in the humidity. southern California has unusual low relative humidity which makes for a very dry atmosphere, so any increase is like a helping hand to our firefighters.
As a point of interest to our readers, here in the Los Angeles area, we live in what can be best described as a giant open ended basin, some eighty miles in diameter, surrounded by mountains on three sides with the western side, (Pacific Ocean side), open. Just nineteen miles to our north is Mt. San Antonio, rising to a tidy 10,000 feet in the San Gabriel chain, to our west is the San Jacinto range, with Mt San Gorgonio rising to over 11,000 feet, and to the south the Santa Ana range, not quite so high but still well over 5,000 feet. As you can imagine, this is all very rugged terrain and very tough for firefighters to gain access to.
As a point of interest to our readers, here in the Los Angeles area, we live in what can be best described as a giant open ended basin, some eighty miles in diameter, surrounded by mountains on three sides with the western side, (Pacific Ocean side), open. Just nineteen miles to our north is Mt. San Antonio, rising to a tidy 10,000 feet in the San Gabriel chain, to our west is the San Jacinto range, with Mt San Gorgonio rising to over 11,000 feet, and to the south the Santa Ana range, not quite so high but still well over 5,000 feet. As you can imagine, this is all very rugged terrain and very tough for firefighters to gain access to.