Bryson Fire breaks out in Malibu

...nearby Malibu. This is on 427 Encinal Canyon Road near Mulholland Highway. So far, we're looking at a fire here with 11 acres burned. You can see, though, perhaps those are actually active flames there. Obviously, with this Santa Ana wind condition, a lot of concern in a lot of areas. There you go. Much closer shot there of the flames there. The Bryson fire, You can see some kind of structure to the left of your screen there. Not too many homes visible in this immediate area, but there you go. You see just a hop, skip, and a jump away. You see a lot more structures and homes there. Santa Monica Mountains National Reserve there. And so there you go. As we look here, waiting to see if we have any water-dropping helicopters or Foscheck planes coming through. Okay, to the bottom there. look at the structures there to the bottom of that fire there's a helicopter there we go right there we see it looks like that is a a mix of homes perhaps in that area got to be a lot of concern right there for those people who live there not sure if they are homes or some kind of business type structure there uh that that flat line there of structures looks more like possibly a business to me not quite sure all right but there you go there we have another helicopter coming in. As we know, fire crews were already on alert with word that we're going to have Santa Ana winds coming through and a beautiful drop right there. Obviously, the goal is to first protect lives and then, of course, structures. So right now, they want to get a handle on this one because we've seen these fires burn all the way down to the ocean. There you go. Another helicopter there. So it looks like they're really tackling this from the air quite quickly, despite there having been fires elsewhere already in Southern California. So again, this is the Malibu area. This is called the Bryson Fire. Again, hard to tell if that is some kind of business complex below or actual homes. Now there, that shot right there, a lot more visible when it comes to the active flames burning there. We'll get a feel from Adam Kruger about the winds on this one. We know with the Santa Ana conditions, the winds are varying depending on the day and the hour. Okay, there you go. Looks like, looks to me like home was in that circular area there. Fire crews stationed there on the ground as well. All right, you see there the winds blowing the smoke up the hillside there, kind of away from those structures. Adam Kruger, our meteorologist, let's bring you in here. You talked about winds varying from like 30 miles per hour to possibly in some areas 70 miles per hour. Where are we at here in Malibu? Hey, Christine. Yeah. So there's going to be, you know, a range of winds depending on the exact specific location we're talking about. But I've got a weather station available pretty close to where this fire is. It's up in the mountains there near Malibu. And so that specific weather station is showing a wind gust at 5 p.m. of 41 miles per hour. Pretty significant. And for this particular station, that's the highest wind gust we've seen there all day long. So this was the expectation is that winds would be on the increase as we went through the day today. And I'll tell you, as far as the wind forecast goes, we expect the wind speeds to increase even more later tonight. This is not one of those situations where we get the winds during the day and they calm down at night. If anything, the wind speeds actually increase as we go late through the night tonight. I'd say after midnight, in fact, the wind speeds go up even more. And tomorrow should be the peak of our strongest winds. But still, like I said, they've been increasing through this afternoon. So the weather station that I'm referencing, again near this fire we get a data output from it every 10 minutes and so going back like i said 5 p.m it was showing a gust of 41. 10 minutes before that the gust was at 30 and then it was 31 30 25 so it's been kind of 20s and 30s over the last hour or two and the highest gust we've seen is just in the last few minutes at 41. those winds are blowing from the northeast that's that Santa Ana wind direction so from northeast meaning it's blowing towards the ocean however as we often see with these fires as they're in steep terrain that the fire can kind of travel where it wants. It likes to go uphill, so it doesn't necessarily follow the winds. I mean, yes, the winds would help fan the flames in a certain direction and blow embers in a certain direction, but also the flames can spread anywhere depending more so on the terrain. And it looks like this is a pretty substantial line of fire right there. Now, in addition to the wind, we obviously have hot and dry conditions. Those are the three things that make up a Santa Ana wind event. Windy, very low humidity, and very hot temperatures. Right now near Malibu, it's 89 degrees. That's hot, and the relative humidity is 16 percent. Generally, anytime we're talking under 20 percent, that's very dry air. So again, it's dry, it's hot, and it's windy. Like I said, gusts near this area are topping out just over 40 miles per hour right now, and unfortunately, those wind speeds are going to hold about at that level through the rest of this afternoon and evening and if anything late tonight the wind speeds will go up even a little bit more Christine as we look at this fire here i'm thinking of the information you just put out for us right there that you do expect the winds to increase at night it's obviously a lot of concern in this area in malibu my question for you is we also think of it being cooler conditions and more moisture at night thoughts on that right so obviously i I mean, temperature-wise, once the sun goes down, yes, it does naturally cool down. However, not the situation where the humidity goes up tonight. So, you know, again, under normal circumstances, yes, it obviously cools off at night, and the humidity tends to go up at night as well. This, the humidity we're seeing has to do 100% with the wind. So even though it will get cooler tonight, the winds are going to continue to create that dry air. And while relative humidity might slightly fluctuate to a slightly more humid direction overnight, it's still going to be very dry air. So it's not the situation where, you know, at times in the last month or two, we've seen wildfires flare up, but we knew going into the evening hours that humidity would be up a lot and winds would be going down at night. This is not the situation because what we're seeing with our current weather is completely 100% driven by the wind direction and the fact that we're finding strong winds coming out of the desert, over the mountains, creating that hot and dry environment. So we continue to deal with favorable fire conditions, essentially, as we get into the nighttime hours. So it's not like we're going to get any big relief weather-wise anytime soon. And again, just thinking forward, you know, tomorrow the winds get even stronger. Saturday we still have red flag warnings. The winds overall might not be as intense on Saturday, but we've got a three-day stretch here today, Friday, and Saturday, where if a fire may start, it could get out of control quickly, and it looks like we are potentially looking at that here in real time right now. All right, let me get back to something you said, favorable fire conditions. Right.