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2007 California Wildfires

Weather turn should help quell fires, forecasters say

By Hector BecerraStaff Writer 
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Southern California:

At 3 p.m., the National Weather Service’s high wind warning expired, and gust began to taper off. It was still plenty windy, said weather specialist Bonnie Bartling, but the 60 to 100 mph gusts that had roared down the canyons in the last few days would largely disappear Tuesday night.

Winds in the Newhall pass, which on Sunday and Monday clocked in at more than 70 miles per hour, were down to a relatively tolerably 48 miles per hour on Tuesday, Bartling said.

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“We’re kicking into a weaker Santa Ana tomorrow around noon,” she said late Tuesday.

“The high pressure system is going to move far enough to the east where it will turn off the Santa Ana spigot,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada-Flintridge.

Patzert said that by Friday, and for sure by the weekend, “we should be back to our marine layer in the morning.” Temperatures that reached 95 degrees in Pasadena shoudl be down to the mid- to low-70s by Saturday, he added.


On Tuesday, Pasadena reached 95 degrees, Patzert said. By Saturday, temperatures in that city should plummet to the mid to low 70s, he said. That’s just a snapshot of what will happen in the region, Patzert said.

“It will be a lot cooler, a lot more humid, and that will really slow down these fires,” Patzert said.

-- Hector Becerra

2007 California Wildfires
Hector Becerra

Hector Becerra is managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. A native Angeleno who grew up in Boyle Heights, Becerra’s first foray into journalism was as the editor of the University Times at Cal State Los Angeles. He started his career at the Los Angeles Times in 1999 and was a general assignment reporter until 2014, covering everything from wildfires to crime to Latino cultural trends. He has been among the first to a murder scene as part of a ride-along in South L.A. and has tried his hand as a field worker, picking strawberries in Santa Maria. Becerra was part of the team of reporters that won the Pulitzer Prize’s Public Service award for its coverage of the city of Bell corruption scandal. He was city editor for the California section until 2022, when he was promoted to deputy managing editor. He was named managing editor in 2024.

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