Los Angeles Unified school officials are opening several centers where students affected by wildfires can pick up free meals. 

Meals will be available between 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the following locations: 

Carlos Angulo, a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier, wound his way up and down Kagel Canyon Road, familiar by now with the neighbors — many of whom work in the film industry — who line the street.

Except on Thursday, the street was lined with charred trees, melted playground equipment and destroyed homes — casualties of the Creek fire, all. 

Angulo, who has worked this route for about 13 years, pulled up outside of the ashes of one home.

On Thursday afternoon, helicopters hauling water dipped into Lake Casitas, west of California 33, and headed to a fire near the Ojai Valley. Fires dotted the hillsides along California 150. A mix of firefighters in trucks and helicopters worked to extinguish those fires, steering them away from the towns of Casitas Springs and Oak View.

Since late Monday, the Thomas fire has burned at least 96,000 acres and 150 structures. Fire officials plan to update those numbers, possibly Thursday evening.

Through Wednesday night and into Thursday, the Thomas fire spread significantly around Ojai and into the Los Padres National Forest. Officials have feared the fire could last for weeks if the area doesn't see any rain and if high winds continue.

The Lilac fire, which began Thursday afternoon near the 15 Freeway and Highway 76, was threatening 1,000 structures and had grown to 500 acres by 1 p.m., according to Cal Fire San Diego.

Southern California may get the Santa Ana winds every year, but — according to recorded history — they’ve never been like this.

With relative humidities in the single digits along the coastal mountains, where a series of fires has scorched thousands of acres and destroyed more than 100 homes, the air is the driest it’s been here in recorded history, said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.

“The [relative] humidities right now along the coast are much drier than what you’d normally see in the interior desert in the summertime,” Swain said. “Once you get down to 1% or 2%, you’re down almost as low as is physically possible.”

Firefighters on Thursday were battling a wildfire in Murrieta that has burned more than 100 acres.

The Liberty fire broke out at Los Alamos and Liberty roads, according to CalFire.

It was not currently threatening homes.

Even as fiery tornadoes of flames began climbing the slopes of the remote box canyon he calls home Thursday morning, Jayson Kaufman figured he still had plenty of time to pack his valuables and head down mountain to Ojai.

To the chagrin of Ventura County sheriff’s deputies who issued a mandatory evacuation order the previous night, Kaufman was among 15 to 20 canyon dwellers who refused to leave their rustic cabins and geodesic domes tucked in dry brush.

“We’re monitoring the situation — and the clarity of the air — closely,” he said, eyeballing clouds of smoke filling the skies on both ends of the densely forested canyon. “This morning, the sky was super clear until about 10 a.m. Now, we’re playing it by ear.”

Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said if the wind continues, and rain doesn’t touch the region, the Thomas fire could continue for a few more weeks. 

“Until the wind stops blowing, there’s really not a lot we can do as far as controlling the perimeter, so our opportunities are hopefully going to come in tomorrow as the wind lets up,” Lorenzen said. Then, he said, the firefighters can place line around the blaze and contain part of it, but “this is a fight we’re going to be fighting probably for a couple of weeks.”

While there was once such a thing as a predictable wildfire season, Lorenzen said that season now seems to last all year — a shift, he said, potentially triggered by six years of drought and climate change.

Alicia Stratton stood alongside railroad tracks in Faria Beach and watched the flames burn a few hundred feet away. She had evacuated her home about 30 minutes earlier. 

Stratton, 58, lives in Oak View, but her family has a vacation home in Faria Beach.

“This fire kept migrating,” she said. “As soon as the wind picked up, I started to worry.” 

Courtney Horrow isn’t taking any chances.  

She is taking her two daughters, ages 4 and 6, to Palm Desert — away from the growing winds that for days have filled the skies with smoke and ash and now threaten her home, which sits up a hill on a windy street on North Bundy Drive and Chalon Road in Brentwood.

She didn’t plan on returning to her white-wooded house until Sunday. As she placed bags of clothes in the back seat of her black SUV, she said that many of her neighbors already had chosen to evacuate.