Strong winds fueled fires across Santa Ana in California. Dramatic footage shows a plume of smoke rising from a hillside, with strong winds swaying trees in the foreground on3. Reports indicated the large vegetation fire started Thursday afternoon on a hilltop near the US-Mexico border.

The Santa Ana winds are dry, powerful winds that blow down the mountains toward the Southern California coast. The region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January. When conditions are dry, as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard.

Just a few years after the ozone hole was detected via satellite, the industrialized nations of the world, meeting in Montreal in 1987, adopted what is known as the Montreal Protocol.

Critical fire conditions are expected to continue through Friday. But rain could be on the way this weekend. Here's what to know.

Southern California will continue to face "dangerous fire weather conditions" including strong Santa Ana winds and extremely low humidity through later this week, forecasters said Tuesday.

The Santa Anas are expected to be most powerful Monday night into Tuesday. Fire services across the region say they are ready.

Not only do these winds accelerate the speed and spread of the fires, they also affect how the fires are fought. The strong winds can make it dangerous to fly aircraft used for containing the fires.

Winds have picked up and are expected to continue through Tuesday morning, raising the risk of new wildfires sparking

Although evacuation orders have since been lifted for most of LA County, fire survivors continue to face the road to recovery as they focus on rebuilding.

Thousands of firefighters have been battling wildfires across 45 square miles of densely populated Los Angeles County. The two largest fires, the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades and the Eaton Fire near Pasadena, remain active. One of the latest, the Hughes Fire in the Castaic area, has prompted evacuation orders for tens of thousands of people.

Even as Santa Ana winds continued to blast parts of the Southland, helping to fuel a new brush fire in the Castaic area, local authorities turned their attention Wednesday to the possibility of rain hitting the area this weekend,

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A wildfire whipped up by extreme winds swept through a Los Angeles ... 10:30 a.m., shortly after the start of a Santa Ana windstorm that the National Weather service warned ...