Sustained powerful winds reaching nearly 100 miles per hour are driving fast-moving wildfires near Los Angeles, spewing smoke, destroying homes, closing roads, and forcing thousands of people to evacuate.

The Palisades fire along the coast near the Santa Monica mountains has burned more than 5,000 acres as of Wednesday afternoon. The Eaton fire near Pasadena has now torched at least 2,200 acres. The blazes have killed at least two people and destroyed more than 1,000 structures. Other smaller fires are also burning in the region.

Dangerous fire weather conditions are ongoing in southern California with the most extreme conditions expected this morning. Winds should gradually weaken somewhat through the day, but critical fire weather conditions are expected to persist into Thursday. pic.twitter.com/bl4WLF21Ua

These blazes are stunning in their scale and speed, jumping from ignition to thousands of acres in a day, but they’re hardly unexpected. Fire forecasters have been warning since the beginning of the year that conditions were ripe for massive infernos, particularly in Southern California. “For January, above normal significant fire potential is forecast across portions of Southern California,” according to a National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) bulletin on January 2.

“This was an exceptionally well-predicted event from a meteorological and fire-predictive services perspective,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles, said Wednesday during a livestream.

The winter months are typically when Southern California quenches its thirst with rainfall, but the past few weeks have been unusually dry, and little snowfall has accumulated in the surrounding........

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