Rain Won’t Douse Fire Season

A strong low-pressure system should bring the first substantial rain to Ventura County over the next few days but won’t bring the end of fire season, fire officials said.

“That’s the thing about Southern California, we can have rain this week and next week we could get another Santa Ana event,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Norm Plott said.

Overnight Wednesday and into Thursday, sixth-tenths of an inch of rain fell in the west county, and a trace was recorded in the east county.

But while others were mopping up in the aftermath, Plott and others on the county’s constant fire watch repeated their common wisdom: Ventura County is always just a Santa Ana wind storm away from brush fire conditions.

“We are ready for the rain and we are ready if it burns,” said Sandi Wells, a spokeswoman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

In the meantime, morning commuters today can expect a wet drive into work as the first storm of the season makes its way across the region.

Because of a low-pressure system above the Pacific Ocean that has continued to gain strength since Wednesday, it should rain off and on today before tapering off in the early evening, said meteorologist Curt Kaplan of the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Saturday is expected to be cool and cloudy but mostly dry. Sunday will be the same, but by the afternoon another cool, wet system should bring showers and snow down to the 5,000-foot level, Kaplan said.

Monday morning commuters will hit some wet spots, but by midday the clouds and the rain should be gone, Kaplan said.

Temperatures throughout Ventura County will dip into the mid-40s, while highs will top out in the mid-60s, Kaplan said.

Before the weather clears, the storm will most likely dump about an inch of rain across the county, Kaplan said.

It may seem like an unseasonably cool system for late October, but Kaplan said it’s right on schedule and doesn’t necessarily mean a soggy winter.

That’s not good news for Plott and others in the county charged with putting out brush fires.

If there is one spot in the county that has long been considered one of the region’s unofficial tinder boxes, it’s Plott’s Ojai station.

Fanned by hot winds through the canyons, the brush in the Ojai Valley region is usually ripe for a serious fire during the traditional fire season from May to November.

Cooler weather and some rain on the road and the windshield won’t convince him the threat of a major fire has gone, Plott said.

Wells said grassy areas cooked by summer heat will need at least a 2-inch drenching before fire danger subsides.

Last December’s arson in Ojai that blackened 4,300 acres and burned a barn and a home is a good example, Wells said.

Rain had already hit the area by the time the blaze ignited Dec. 24. Even so, it burned into the new year before firefighters could establish control.

“Right now the conditions are very winter-like, but that could change,” Wells said. “We are definitely not out of the woods.”

Three other considerably large brush fires have hit the region this year but have caused relatively little damage, Wells said.

The Calabasas fire in June, which began on the Ventura-Los Angeles county border, charred 800 acres but spared structures. A slow-moving brush fire that frustrated fire crews in the Padre Juan area near Faria Beach burned about 100 acres of brush. And Monday, 50 acres of brush and dry eucalyptus trees burned in Simi Valley and forced the brief closure of the Ronald Reagan Freeway.