California Wildfires Fueled by Santa Ana Winds (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: New fires burning in California tonight. Red flag warnings up. Wind gusts up to 80 miles an hour fueling multiple fires, in fact. And the scare for a time along the 405 freeway right near the Getty Center Museum. Matt Gupman on the scene again tonight.

Speaker 2: Tonight, Southern California is again a powder keg, howling Santa Ana winds in bone-dry conditions fueling fires big and small.

Speaker 3: You can see they're making retardant drops already.

Speaker 2: West of L.A. in Ventura County, dirt flying smoke blasting firefighters working furiously, stopping forward progress of the Laguna fire, but not before a Cal State campus was forced to evacuate. And overnight, the Sepulveda fire breaking out along the 405 freeway near the Getty Center Museum, burning 40 acres before firefighters got a handle on it.

Speaker 3: And that is to knock this down very, very quickly. It is not windy right now.

Speaker 2: Meanwhile, just north of Los Angeles, firefighters still battling the now 15-square-mile Hughes fire. An all-out aerial assault through the night, precision drops saving the town of Castea.

Speaker 4: I mean, you can see the air asset right now, that helicopter dropping fire so close to the ground right behind you. I mean, it was barely 30 feet off the deck just now.

Speaker 2: We have some of the best pilots in the world out here in L.A., L.A. County, L.A. City. Thankfully, no homes were lost, but for families forced to flee, nerves are frayed tonight.

Speaker 5: Sad when we were leaving, especially seeing what happened with parasites and all that.

Speaker 2: David, Southern California is such a tinderbox today that there have been 10 new fire starts today alone. And you can see firefighters still here at the Sepulveda fire. They're trying to spray down hot spots on the hillside over there. That's because those red flag warnings are set to persist into tomorrow morning with winds gusting locally at up to 80 miles per hour. David.

Speaker 1: Matt Guffin again tonight. Matt, thank you. Let's get right to meteorologist Lee Goldberg from our New York station, WABC, tracking the dangerous winds right into the night. And of course, here in the east when this brutal cold finally breaks. So, Lee, take us through it all.

Speaker 6: David, we'll begin with the fire forecast. We're not done with the critical fire danger just yet. The winds are relaxing a bit, but we still have some powerful dangerous gusts and low humidity into tomorrow morning. The red flag warning will go until 10 in the morning. But big pattern change for the weekend. Onshore winds, higher humidity, even some moderate rain and mountain snow. The only concern, isolated downpours. If they hit the burn scars, we have to be concerned about mudslides. Turning to the cold, sound the retreat. The Arctic air is definitely easing. We still have one more cold morning in the southeast. You see the cold weather alerts, sub-zero wind chills in the Midwest. But temperatures take off over the weekend. 60s are back in Houston, 50s in Atlanta, and 40s here in the northeast will go a long way to cure that cabin fever. David, the 40s will feel like summer around here.

Speaker 1: Lee, thank you.