 Hi, I'm Brian May in the Cal OES newsroom. We have excessive heat warnings all across the state of California, but they are especially dangerous in Southern California this week. So join us to explain why we are headed towards some very dangerous conditions. Chris Matarochia, who is a science and operations officer with the National Weather Service. Chris, first of all, thank you very much for joining us today. Sure. Let's first just discuss what this forecast is that we're looking for this week. We're looking for several days of dangerous heat that is not usual for this time of year, even though we're accustomed to the heat. This is something that only happens maybe once or twice a year, and Southern California is going to be the center of that heat, specifically around Anaheim. And they're the worst days this week that we're going forward, what are the worst days? The worst day is most likely going to be Wednesday. The forecast will probably change a little bit, but any day can be bad, but the worst day of the entire heat wave will be Wednesday. Yes. We're in mid to late July now. It's always hot in the summer, but what makes this time this week so especially dangerous? That's really a great question. We get that all the time. It's hot here all the time, but what makes it dangerous is the low temperatures at night. There's not going to be the relief that we're accustomed to at night. We're going to break records as far as low temperatures are concerned, so this is something unusual that doesn't happen. And also the duration. We're looking at a heat wave that could go all the way through Friday perhaps. You at the National Weather Service have what's called a heat risk map. Can you kind of talk about that and maybe even give us an example of how you're using it and what people need to know about it? Sure. I'd be glad to. It's a publicly accessible website, so anybody can really look at it. So what it does is it takes a lot of different factors that go into determining a heat wave or dangerous heat that can put people at risk for heat-related illnesses. It puts it all into one place, into a picture format that's easy to read. So as we look at it here, very simply, purple means a very high risk for... Purple's bad, right? The entire population right, or magenta actually, but when you see that, that means everybody is at risk. Red again is bad, so you'll see usually an excessive heat warning with a red or a purple. Red is more, again, there is a risk for the population, but especially those who are heat sensitive, the very young, the very old, people on certain medications or people who aren't acclimated to the heat. So Chris, with these extreme heat conditions, I know that's going to make our already bad fire season even worse. Are there any areas that you're especially concerned about as we go forward? Yes, definitely. With the particular weather setup in this scenario, we have a red flag warning out for Santa Barbara County. Now, that means that if any fires do start, there's a high risk for them to spread rapidly, and that's mostly due to the winds. And as you can see here, the wind direction is coming out of the northwest, so if you look at the elevations here, the wind is going to come over the mountains and then do something what we call downslope or sink, and as that air sinks, it accelerates and warms and dries out the area even further right along the coast here, if you compare this to the color scale, you're looking at 35, 40 mile per hour gusts, so any fires that do happen to get started with the heat, with the very dry conditions, with the overnight temperatures which aren't recovering that much, with the wind gusts, again, there's a very high risk for potentially a dangerous situation if a fire starts for it to spread rapidly. So we'll be watching Santa Barbara County very closely for the potential for high fire danger with the red flag warning, which is in effect beginning tomorrow, and that goes through Thursday, and that's for the sundowner winds, as to refer to. Usually the winds get most gusty during the late afternoon, evening times, and then again during the early morning times, that's when the wind speeds would be the highest. And we've seen very recently just how dangerous those sundowner winds can be when a fire pops up. Very true, very true. So we want everyone to be reticent and everyone to be aware of the risk that is at hand with this particular event. There are going to be, look, we're still in the summertime, kids aren't back in school yet, there are going to be folks who are headed, maybe either down to Anaheim, Yosemite, where there's smoke still, but going hiking, hitting the lakes, what do people need to know if they're going to be outside for especially extended periods of time as we head toward the weekend? Well, you definitely want to limit the amount of time that you're outside. Take frequent breaks, meaning going inside to a cooler building, have a lot of water with you when you are outside, if you do decide to even do that. So just looking right now at Southern California, this is the outline of our excessive heat warning. And you can see there's a lot of magenta, a lot of red in that area. This includes the big cities in Southern California, we're looking at Los Angeles. San Diego along the coast usually doesn't get quite as warm. So if you're at the beach, you're going to be a little bit cooler, but you don't have to go too much further inland to encounter dangerous heat. And again, it's the duration and the lack of relief overnight that's going to put people at risk for heat related illnesses. You talk about that lack of relief overnight, I think in some areas it's not going to drop even below what 90 at night, right? That is very true. Minimum temperatures in some cases are going to be 15 degrees above normal. Again, daily records for warm minimum temperatures look like they're pretty likely to be broken here and just showing you here really quickly what some of the minimum temperatures are here. This would be for Wednesday morning. We're looking at temperatures still in the middle 70s for some spots. The later that we go into the week into Thursday, again, we're looking at temperatures, Palmdale, you can see popping up there at 78 along the coast, a little bit cooler, but still when we have temperatures in the middle 70s and near 80 in some spots, that's pretty dangerous. And that's again, those are usually the times that people will go outside during excessive heat events where they think that they're going to have relief and really that's not going to be the case. So again, that's what's so different about this particular heat wave compared to the one we had a few weeks ago where the focus was mainly on the maximum temperatures during the day, where this is going to be a combination of the maximum temperatures and the minimum temperatures at night. Chris, I know this kind of heat creates not only problems for exposure to people, but also you talk about very high fire risks. This is going to be a tax on the energy grid across the state. I know you had a conference call with leaders from across the state earlier today. What are you guys working in coordination on looking at going forward? Well, there's other things to be concerned with too. And you hit upon Yosemite, there's an active fire in that area. Anybody that's hiking up there that has any type of respiratory issues, asthma, you're really going to have to take it easy and prepare and take caution, maybe bring along an inhaler with you if you decide to go up there because the air quality is going to be bad. Another thing to be concerned with is there is a risk for thunderstorms across much of the Sierra Nevada pretty much all this week, especially the next couple of days. So there is going to be a risk for lightning strikes. And as you know, if you're hiking at a very high level, you're putting yourself at risk for getting struck by lightning. So there's a lot of lightning safety tips that we can talk about too with regards to that. All right, thank you very much, Chris Matarotia with the National Weather Service. And we've got more information about the excessive heat this week on our Cal OES website. Also, flex alerts have been issued for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. And during flex alerts, you are asked to use your major appliances only after 9 p.m. Turn off any unneeded lights and be sure and turn your air conditioner up to about 78 if you can take it if at all possible. You can find out more about these flex alerts by going to flexalert.org. And for all of us at Cal OES, I'm Brian May. Thanks for watching.