If ever there was an omen for a bad new year, Los Angeles, California is facing it at this very moment. Just a week after the turn of the year, a band of wildfires began to make its way through several heavily populated counties in Southern California. Devastating as it may seem, it is still a vast improvement from the 30 that started us off.
As many people feared, 2025 has so far proven itself to hold the conditions for a perfect storm. Quite literally, the weather conditions in the Los Angeles area recently procured a haven for the fires to grow and flourish. Severe drought, dry air quality, and hurricane winds descended upon one of the most populated sectors of the country and invigorated one unlucky flame. Although it is hard to pinpoint what exactly began such relentless fires, these common Southwest weather conditions combined with bad luck make for pretty sound speculation.
Regardless of the cause of this standing tragedy, the effects of it have lived up to the expectations of our worst case scenarios. As of January 17, just ten days after the blaze reached commendable heights, 27 people have been killed by the fires. Apart from lives taken, neighborhoods and homes across several counties were left for ruin by their inhabitants who had to choose between leaving or turning to ash.
“When I used to live there there were fires, but mostly up in mountains or valleys where no houses were around,” says Chesterton High School Junior Hazel Santos, a former Californian who has been watching on the news as her former home burns down.
Major cities like Los Angeles and San Diego have erupted in flames, and given the near perfect climate that the area is known for, the population of people who lost their homes and had to clear out is immense, making this particular bout of wildfires an anomaly even in a place so prone to them. Not to mention the wildlife destroyed, which is vast even around one of the most populous regions of the nation. The weather conditions that created the beautiful landscape have shown their much less attractive side; the arid climate and lack of rain have endorsed the fires for much longer than necessary to do thorough damage.
Fortunately, there is moisture in the air! For the first time in months, the forecast calls for a smattering of rain down on the blazes. It was days into the catastrophe before the Los Angeles Fire Department began the long-winded fight of extinguishing the fires, so the assistance of ⅓ inch of rain, as scarce as it may sound, is greatly anticipated. However, like every blessing, this one comes with a few consequences. Due to the extremely dry conditions made worse by the fires, certain areas could be negatively affected by the rain coming to help them. The fires left burn scars on the ground, which are sections of burned land that are void of all vegetation. Because the burned land is ruined for approximately two years after the event, any water that passes through is not absorbed into the ground like it normally would be, causing a buildup of rain water and the potential for flash floods. Ironically, the solution to the fires may induce the exact opposite problem. One particular burn scar, the one carved by the Palisades fire, is dangerously wedged between the ocean and a series of hills that were great hosts for slides and flooding even before the circumstances became more grave.
Even before the rain has come down on California, precautions have already been taken to prevent potential flooding, which could be frustrating for citizens, seeing as there is still a red-hot problem at hand. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to fully smother such vast fires, and everything that can be done to diminish them is already in-play. To corroborate the return to a more negative outlook, wind is just as likely in the following days as the droplets of rain. Before the last flame is blown out, time proves to be the only reliable extinguisher for truly wild fires.