Red flag warning for parts of the Bay Area

You hear Tom talking about the winds and the conditions up there. Very dangerous conditions for a fire like this to break out in. Yeah, we were talking about the events, you know, last week, setting things up. We had two red flag warnings last week, each drying out those hills a bit more, and those gusty winds developed, and that happened, in fact, early this morning. So this fire started about 6.30 this morning, a small fire, and then rapid growth. Take a look at these pictures. Hard to believe all this was just beginning at 6.30 this morning, less than 12 hours ago, and the wind's really not helping out the fire crews. In fact, the wind's pushing the smoke, at least you can see that smoke, on the satellite here. So this is the campfire, and this is not cloud cover. That is smoke drifting closer toward Northern California and the Bay Area. If you stepped outside just over the past few hours, you have noticed a significant change in our sky conditions. Let's come in closer right now. We'll show you, give you a better idea of the topography right around the campfire. You can see Paradise, and you can see some other small towns in this region, and the Feather River. So it's right around Highway 70 in this region, and you get an idea of some of the topography fire crews have been trying to deal with, and the fire moving in this direction steadily. It's a northeast wind, so that means the fire spread has been to the south and to the west. As far as you can see the distance from Paradise, so that's where the fire started, but it has been moving closer to this region. so for to maybe put a distance locator on this from this area that is in fact let's bring that to closer to to this this one tool here and measure that's right about 10 miles so very close that's why paradise is under that extreme threat as far as the current conditions around the fire zone these are the sampling of some of the weather stations out there wind speeds around 28 to 45 miles an hour that is right now take a look at those relative humidity levels around 10 to 12 to 14 percent it is very dry across northern california now the red flag warning in place right now through tonight until seven o'clock tomorrow morning we've already experienced as we showed you gusts topping 40 miles an hour but i think the strongest winds were earlier this morning so gradually it's going to be a slow gradual process we'll scale back on the intensity of those wind speeds so here we are this afternoon those brighter colors actually represent the stronger wind speeds it's at five o'clock and then you'll notice an improvement finally not until probably sunrise friday we scale back on those wind speeds and the red flag warning comes to an end so weather conditions will be improving but we still have to wait at least another 12 hours or so before things start to improve for the fire zone all this having a big impact on our local air quality this picture snapped a few minutes ago that is our camera we had crystal clear skies yesterday looking out towards San Francisco. Not the case for today. Air quality advisory up for today and once again for tomorrow, especially for tomorrow morning as things begin to settle so that smoke settles down We'll continue to keep an eye on the fire conditions and have much more in our forecast. We'll be changing a little bit as we head toward the weekend.