Howling Winds Take Down Trees, Could Lead To More Power Outages This Weekend
BURBANK (CBSLA) — Strong, gusty winds took down trees in the early morning hours of Friday and has SoCal Edison mulling more power outages to prevent equipment from sparking wildfires.
Trees were uprooted by the howling winds, causing some damage. In Panorama City, crews were on the scene quickly to clean up a tree that fell onto the back of an SUV, while in Burbank, another tree tipped over onto a condo. It's not clear if the condo sustained any damage.
In Santa Barbara's Goleta, firefighters spent the night battling a new brush fire that was whipped up by the wind, while in LA County, the 8,391-acre Saddle Ridge Fire which broke out in Sylmar continues to burn. Firefighters are racing to improve on the 68 percent containment as of Friday morning.
Wind gusts reaching 30 to 50 miles per hour are possible in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys through Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Then weak to moderate Santa Ana winds are expected to arrive Sunday through Tuesday.
"We'll have Santa Ana conditions by the end of the weekend into the start of the work week," CBS2 Meteorologist Danielle Gersh said Friday. "So really elevated fire danger the next several days, but even more so Sunday into Monday, even possibly into Tuesday."
The 60 Freeway in Moreno Valley was shut down Friday morning by Caltrans due to downed power lines.
SoCal Edison is again considering shutting off power to thousands of customers as more gusty winds are forecast for this weekend. On Thursday, 200,000 households in Kern and Mono counties spent hours in the dark.
More than 22,000 customers in the Inland Empire; 6,000 in Santa Barbara County; 4,000 in Los Angeles County and 2,000 in Orange County could also see their power shut off as a precaution against wildfires.
