Winds That Fanned Fires to Diminish : ‘A Pretty Nice Weekend’ Expected

Early morning and late night clouds and temperatures in the 60s are forecast for the weekend as Santa Ana winds are expected to diminish after whipping through Orange County for two days and fanning at least five roof fires.

Small plane traffic at John Wayne and Fullerton airports was below normal Thursday as the dry warm winds of up to 20 m.p.h. made flying more difficult and discouraged many student pilots from taking to the air, airport spokesmen said.

However, the winds that had fanned a raging fire that destroyed one home on Wednesday had subsided enough by Thursday morning for the National Weather Service to lift its three-day small craft advisories off Orange County beaches, a weather service spokesman said.

Gusting Winds

“It should be pretty nice for the weekend,” Weather Service spokesman Bill Hoffer said.

The Weather Service’s forecast through Tuesday calls for an increasing chance of early morning and late-night fog and low clouds near the coast with cooler temperatures during the day. Nights, however, should be warmer than earlier in the week, reaching into the lower 50s, according to the forecast.

Gusting easterly winds may continue below the canyons, but should end by this afternoon, according to the Weather Service.

For most people, the Santa Ana winds blowing out of the canyons meant only sneezing fits, clothing charged with static electricity and dust on the windowsill. But Thursday, it spelled near catastrophe for the Katherine Trujillo family in Garden Grove.

“I heard noises coming out of my heater that sounded like wires whipping around in the attic,” Trujillo said. “I ran out back.”

Trujillo saw flames rising from the roof of her home in the 5900 block of Trinette Avenue.

“By the time I had dialed 911, my son had the fire out with a garden hose,” she said.

Firefighters and Trujillo said papers burned in the family’s fireplace earlier in the morning had caused embers to land on the roof, where they were ignited by 20-mile-per-hour winds.

Garden Grove Fire Capt. Nick Booker said it was fortunate for the Trujillos and their neighbors, many of whom have similar wooden shingle roofs, that the ember was partially shielded from the wind on the south side of the roof. Had it landed on the north side, Booker said, the fire would have been fanned more fiercely, perhaps spreading flames to neighboring homes.

One day earlier in Orange there had been such a chain reaction due to the wind. A smoldering roof shingle was whipped into a roaring inferno that destroyed one house and damaged three neighboring houses.

Despite two days of Santa Ana conditions there were no special patrols or announced alerts in brush-covered canyon areas, according to spokesmen for the Orange County Fire Department. Nevertheless, the county Fire Department was prepared to dispatch more than its usual complement of firefighters to brush fires because of the drying effect of the winds, a spokesman said.

When to Worry

“We don’t start worrying about things until wind velocity gets up about 25 miles per hour,” said County Fire Capt. Mark Reinhold. “But whenever you’ve got wind, you’ve got potential.” Elsewhere in California, visitors to the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains are expected to see overnight lows in the mid-20s at resort altitudes, the Weather Service said, but the forecast called for skies to remain generally clear with afternoon highs from the mid-40s to the mid-50s.

The Sierra was expected to remain fair throughout the weekend, with overnight freezing and crisply cool temperatures throughout the daylight hours.

The Weather Service predicted cool weather--highs from the mid-50s to the mid-60s and lows below freezing--for the high desert, while the low deserts were expected to be about 10 degrees warmer overall, with no freezing, and skies fair to slightly overcast in the nights and mornings.

Even San Francisco was expecting nothing more formidable than morning fog in the valleys and partial cloudiness elsewhere with overnight lows below freezing. Daytime temperatures were expected to reach the mid-40s and mid-50s.