California’s Year of Hellfire Continues As a Huge Blaze Erupts Outside of Los Angeles

let off Californians if they ’re ready to call it a year . monolithic , house - destroy , machine - thaw wildfireshave ripped across the nation throughout the spring , summertime , and fall . And the incubus is n’t over yet .

With wintertime , the fire season was supposed to stop as the rainy time of year kicked into gear , but one part of Southern California just burst into flames . Bone dry status and high winds fanned the glare across 31,000 acre .

The fire , dub the Thomas Fire , tease 50 mph fart and quickly tore through the city of Ventura , located about 60 Admiralty mile northwards of Los Angeles . It destroyed at least 150 structures in its path , and forced 27,000 to void to less flammable ground . The latest inferno comes just two months after themost destructive fires in land historycharred wine commonwealth in Northern California . In both cases , the conditions made it nearly impossible to have got back the flaming .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

“ The scene for containment are not good , ” Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said of the Thomas Fire , harmonise the Los Angeles Times . “ Really , Mother Nature is go to decide . ”

Throughout the dark , photos emerged of hillsides on flak , laurel wreath tree diagram fire up like matchsticks , and homes engulfed by a paries of flames . It ’s an increasingly common scene as more and more peoplelive in places prostrate to fireand climate changemakes acute burns more common .

As dawn broke on Tuesday , the fire was still not incorporate . Smoke has drifted to Santa Monica , creating a gloomy fog . Perhaps most ominously , not a drop of rain is in sight .

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This is supposed to be California ’s cockeyed season : The water class turns over on Oct. 1 , and the rain and stack C are suppose to observe presently thereafter . But this year , the southern half of California has been insanely dry .

Many field have visualize just 5 per centum of their normal precipitation since October . That ’s dried out the copious botany that grew during the exceedingly wet winter California had last year . Record - set heating system in late week has help dry out things out further .

Now , a persistent ridgeline of high pressure has parked over the West Coast , and is forecast stay there for at least two weeks . That intend unusually sunny , affectionate weather will be on tap for weeks to come ( that same ridgepole is also unthaw out other time of year snowpack across the West ) . That weather condition could conspire with the Santa Ana wind that usually whip through Southern California at this time of class to turn an errant spark or coal into a firestorm .

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The National Weather Service fire prognosis designate that uttermost or vital fire atmospheric condition could affect 20 million Southern Californians today and tomorrow . Through next workweek , that number balloons to 36 million .

The National Weather Service ’s San Diego office took to Twitter to beg for a radiation pattern change afterwards this calendar month . Right now , the city is on cartroad to have draw 1929 for its driest start to the urine twelvemonth on record .

You may recall the “ ridiculously resilient ridgeline , ” a weather pattern that helped shut up in one of California ’s worst droughts on disk until last winter ’s platter pelting . The droughtstarted in the wintertime of 2011 - 12and persisted until last year , when heavy rainfall and snowfinally wiped it out .

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Its a ridge & it is here to stay for the first one-half of December / No rainwater betoken through the 15th / Oh please permit there be a pattern change later on in the month /#SoCal#SanDiegoWx#Ridgepic.twitter.com/8ERuPbrnAz

— NWS San Diego ( @NWSSanDiego)December 5 , 2017

This new normal looks very similar to the rooftree that helped the drought become entrenched . Though it ’s too early to say whether it ’s here to stay this time around , there are admonish signs it could be a ironical wintertime for Southern California .

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“ Patterns like this have a disposition to become self - reinforcing , lasting for much long than more typical transient conditions patterns and pass to prolonged stretches of unusual weather , ” Daniel Swain , a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California , Los Angeles , drop a line on his California conditions blog .

Swain mint the preposterously resilient ridgepole moniker and researched it intensively , finding that ridges like it have become muchmore plebeian than they used to be . In particular , warm water system in the western Pacific has a role to play in driving this pattern . That ’s bad news , because the western Pacific is quick mighty now , and it ’s project to stay that way for much of the winter .

There ’s also aweak La Niña , a clime pattern that favors dry weather over the southerly tier of the U.S. It ’s forecast to last through the wintertime , andaccording the Climate Prediction Center , the betting odds are in favor of teetotal stipulation over the next three calendar month for every inch of the state to the south of the Bay Area . Which is probably the last affair Californians want to hear .

Photo: Jae C. Hong

Below are some more tweets documenting the Thomas Fire .

5 champion from Camarillo banded together and went to Ventura to do what they can : assist try stop homes from catching on fervidness with garden hoses with other strangers.pic.twitter.com/41AvBl3CvI

— Marcus Yam 文火 ( @yamphoto)December 5 , 2017

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Multi level apt building burning in Ventura#ThomasFirepic.twitter.com / wAWGpAV2kn

— christina heller ( @CHellerTVNews)December 5 , 2017

This shot from@yamphotois going to be an iconic California wildfire imagepic.twitter.com/cH8Xkaf8sD

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— Chris Megerian ( @ChrisMegerian)December 5 , 2017

The ardor is moving very chop-chop with the wind.#ThomasFirepic.twitter.com / PyiORCewEi

Copter 6 & 7 were forced to land at Santa Paula Airport due to 50 + MPH malarkey . hold off for wind to slacken down so we can get back in the fight . @VCSOVentura@VCSORomanoBassi@VCFDpic.twitter.com/yhGa5m42sp

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.