Any time a person catches H5N1, or bird flu, their infection is a chance for the virus to mutate in the wrong direction. When someone dies from the bird flu—as an elderly Louisiana man did on Jan. 6, becoming the first U.S. death from the disease—experts get especially concerned. Could this person's deadly infection signal that the H5N1 virus is becoming more adept at infecting people and causing severe disease in humans? Here's what experts say. A closer look at the recent death So far, 66 people in the U.S.—most of them farmworkers who spent time around infected cattle and poultry—have been infected with H5N1, but all have recovered after mild illnesses. Health officials get samples from these infected individuals in order to keep tabs on the virus, monitoring it for any signs that it might be mutating to become more adept at infecting people, spread more easily among people, or cause more serious disease. So far, there have been no indications that the virus is changing to allow it to jump from person to person. The Louisiana man was swabbed for samples of the virus in his nose and throat before his death. So were the sick chickens in his backyard, with which he was in direct contact. After analyzing these genetic sequences, scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found a few mutations that weren’t detected in infected chickens on the man's property, suggesting that the virus began changing after infecting him. Read More: We Are Not Safe from Bird Flu Until We Protect Farmworkers But the mutations weren’t sufficient to make the virus transmit more easily from one person to another, they concluded. The virus they identified was also detected in wild birds and chickens in the U.S. and in some human cases in the country and Canada, but it’s different from the strain responsible for the major outbreaks in dairy cows and chickens throughout country. The good news, according to the CDC analysis, is that they found no changes in the part of the viral genome that mutates to resist antiviral drugs, so current drug treatments should still be effective against this strain of H5N1.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Since Election Day, Democrats have rightly been in something of a funk. They sauntered into November expecting Kamala Harris would hold the White House for the party, the House might tip their way, and they even dared to dream about keeping a majority in the Senate. Then, votes were counted. Americans decided to send Donald Trump back to Washington for another four years. The House stayed red by the smallest of margins. And Republicans picked up a majority in the Senate, along with the gavels to run the day-to-day operations of that chamber and to staff the incoming Administration’s Cabinet. Democrats’ billion-dollar cash spigot turned out to be insufficient given the moment and no one—no party elder, no vanguard up-and-comer, no donor with any devil-may-care confidence—could say how exactly the Democrats could burn off the fog that left them limping without a clear read of the landscape. Next week, Democrats will get their first real, meaningful chance to chart a new way forward. The Senate is set to hold its first hearings on Trump’s picks for top jobs in his Administration-in-Waiting. Already, there are signs that Democrats will use those confirmation hearings to rough up some of the nominees on their qualifications and Trump’s plans alike. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, gave the first tangible signal of a strategic opposition in a series of questions she sent this week to Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who is Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, and whose confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday. Democrats say Warren’s fact-based interrogation is a viable model for their approach to nominees like Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominees to be Director of National Intelligence and the nation’s top health official, respectively. While Democrats don’t expect to derail the incoming Cabinet en masse, they do have reasonable expectations that they could ding a few sufficiently enough that Trump rethinks if they’re worth defending. (That approach already cost Matt Gaetz his shot at becoming Attorney General as questions about his relationships with drugs, alcohol, and teenagers piled up.) Trump had initially hoped that his Cabinet would be ready for his first day in office, a big splash that would show he’s hitting the ground running. But as he prepared for Wednesday’s meeting with his Senate allies down at his Florida club, his team had the unfortunate duty of telling him that his raft of picks was not going to be in place when the clock struck noon on Jan. 20. Trump was none too pleased, but Senate GOP staffers were ready with their own complaints: Trump dithered on submitting his nominees to the traditional FBI background checks for almost a month and most of his picks have not turned in all their paperwork. Most Republicans leading the committees that are considering the nominations are not eager to have hearings for nominees who have submitted only partial responses and just-trust-me assurances. Some of Trump’s loyalists in the Senate suggested during a private luncheon this week that maybe it was worth moving forward on nominees even before their paperwork had arrived. That could speed up the process for the likes of Gabbard, a former Democratic House member, and Pam Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General looking to take on the role at the national level. Similarly, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon is still pulling together her files but insists they’re almost ready for the Education Department nominee. In fact, just a few of Trump’s picks are primed to move into their new jobs on Day One: Sen. Marco Rubio’s dossier to become Secretary of State; Rep. Elise Stefanik for the U.N. Ambassador gig; and former Rep. John Ratcliffe to helm the CIA. Other than that, nominees are still missing pieces of the file or are waiting on dates to be confirmed for hearings—a headache for Trump’s quest to have a turn-key Cabinet ready and an opportunity for Democrats to have more time to kick the tires. Which is why Democrats are looking at these hearings as a first test of how unified they can stand as a check against Trump and his governing trifecta of the White House, Senate, and House. Democrats on their own cannot really block the nominations if Republicans hold the line—and to this point that seems like a safe bet—but they can, at the very least, start to chip away at the idea that the GOP has a mandate. While some of the nominees fall far afield from the norms—Hegseth, Gabbard, and RFK Jr. are the marquee names in that cohort, for sure—the bulk will face only nominal opposition from Democrats. The question for them is a simple one: do they rough them all up, or do they reserve their outrage for the truly exceptional picks? So far, it seems like the latter as evidenced in Warren’s first show. That strategic choice may feel hollow as MAGA-fied nominees for other positions go by with minimal friction, but it keeps the heat on the big names that may prove memorable for voters two years from now in the midterms.

The wildfires burning in and around Los Angeles have razed neighborhoods, killed at least 29 people and forced desperate evacuations. The two largest rank among the most deadly and destructive blazes in California history. The sights of thick columns of smoke, eerie orange skies and beloved landmarks in ashes have instilled a new sense of vulnerability in residents, many of whom are used to fires but unaccustomed to so much destruction. Firefighters have been able to contain the smaller blazes and make steady progress on the two largest, and the latest round of dangerous winds subsided on Tuesday. But it could take weeks before people can return to the hardest-hit areas, according to experts.In early January, a series of large and small fires began to form a ring of blazes around Los Angeles. The largest is the Palisades fire, along the Pacific Coast west of downtown, which as of Tuesday had burned more than 23,400 acres and was 65 percent contained, according to Cal Fire. The fire forced evacuations along Pacific Coast Highway, including in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Santa Monica. The next largest fire is to the east: the Eaton fire in the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Pasadena. It has burned more than 14,000 acres, destroyed thousands of homes and displaced tens of thousands of people in evacuations. Containment had reached 89 percent by Tuesday.In the past two weeks, fire crews also contained a number of smaller blazes: the Kenneth fire, which broke out in the West Hills neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley; the Lidia fire, in the Angeles National Forest; the Sunset fire, which ignited in the Hollywood Hills; the Auto fire in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles; the Hurst fire, which started near Sylmar; and the Archer fire, which broke out Friday morning in Granada Hills. A few more small fires erupted in the San Diego area on Tuesday, but they were contained by the afternoon.Preliminary estimates of the scale of damage wrought by the Palisades and Eaton fires put each among the five most destructive in California history. The Palisades fire has destroyed more than 6,000 structures, according to Cal Fire, and the Eaton fire has destroyed over 9,000 structures, a category that includes homes, garages and businesses. The Eaton fire devastated an enclave in Altadena, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, that has long been a magnet for middle-class Black families. The Palisades fire destroyed local landmarks in some of the most affluent areas of Los Angeles. They include Palisades Charter High School, the alma mater of numerous celebrities and a filming location for many television shows, including “Modern Family.” The fire also destroyed the ranch house that the entertainer Will Rogers owned until his death in 1935, and the Topanga Ranch Motel, which appeared in a number of films over the decades.The National Guard and local law enforcement agencies have been enforcing curfews and trying to keep evacuated neighborhoods locked down until residents can safely return. At least 100 people had been arrested in evacuation zones across all of the fires, officials said. Charges have included looting, identity theft, possession of narcotics and possession of burglary tools, according to officials. The Los Angeles County district attorney has announced several prosecutions related to the fires, primarily on charges of looting.At least 29 people have died in the fires. The Eaton fire has killed at least 17 and the Palisades blaze at least 12, making them two of the deadliest in California’s history.Details have begun to emerge about those killed. Five of the victims of the Eaton fire lived within blocks of each other in a close-knit neighborhood in Altadena. The dead in the Palisades fire included a hang-glider, a surfer, a space engineer and a former child star from Australia. Why did so many wildfires break out at about the same time? Forecasters warned for days before the first fires erupted last week that fire danger would be very high. They cautioned that wind gusts could reach 50 to 80 miles per hour, and even 100 m.p.h. or more in some places in the mountains. And vegetation built up over two consecutive wet winters had turned to tinder after months of drought this year. The combination of high winds, dry air and ample fuel combined to make a critical fire-weather event likely in Southern California. Late fall and early winter tend to be when catastrophic fires are most likely to break out in California. Cooler weather coincides with the arrival of Santa Ana winds, the strong, dry gusts that blow southwest from Nevada and Utah into Southern California and are linked to the region’s most devastating fires. The deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s recent history, which destroyed the town of Paradise in the foothills of the Sierras, broke out in mid-November 2018.Firefighters have made progress containing the blazes since winds first started to ease more than a week ago. But the region remains at high risk for wildfires, and the threat is worsened by the low humidity. Another round of strong Santa Ana winds swept through the area early this week. They have abated, but could pick up again on Wednesday evening. The weekend, however, is expected to bring rain — a light but rare shower after several abnormally dry months. That will help dampen the flames, but could also increase the risk of flooding and debris flow.

The windy weather conditions that have fueled the furious spread of wildfires in Southern California finally started to ease on Wednesday afternoon. The worst winds may be over, but the fire danger remains, and another round of powerful winds is expected to pick up again on Thursday afternoon. “It’s a long duration event,” said Devin Black, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. Wind speeds across Los Angeles and eastern Ventura Counties gradually dropped off in the afternoon, but were still strong. Just after 1 p.m. local time on Wednesday, Mr. Black said some areas were gusting up to 60 miles per hour. Overnight, the winds were as fast as 80 m.p.h., even near 100 m.p.h. in the mountains. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Wind speeds are expected to continue to decrease slowly into the evening. Another concern is the shifting wind direction. Andrew Rorke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, warned that the winds were expected to shift slightly and blow from the northeast, which could push the Palisades fire west, where there are more structures. Even with the strong winds out of the northeast, swirling wind patterns known as eddies have formed in some locations, including near the Eaton fire east of Los Angeles. These changing winds, which can spin behind the downwind side of a large object, like a mountain, a rock outcropping or a building, could cause the fires to spread in unpredictable ways. Even as the winds ease on Thursday, the multiple fires and extremely parched vegetation mean that even weak winds could continue to create a wildfire hazard. More danger may be looming. In the latest forecast on Wednesday afternoon, the Weather Service said another round of Santa Ana winds may arrive by Thursday afternoon, earlier than expected. After a brief reprieve Wednesday night into Thursday morning, the winds could pick up again later on Thursday, peaking overnight and continuing into Friday morning across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, forecasters warned. Earlier forecasts indicated the next event would likely begin Friday.This next Santa Ana wind event is expected to be more typical than the current one, with predominantly northeasterly winds focused along the typical Santa Ana wind corridor from the Santa Clarita Valley to Point Mugu. In this area, gusts are likely to be up to 40 m.p.h. in lower-lying areas and up to 60 m.ph., even 70 m.p.h. in the valleys and foothills. “We’ve got the gusty winds, but it’s not like the horrific gusts of 80 to 100 m.p.h.” said Carol Smith, a meteorologist with the Weather Service. Weather conditions are expected to improve over the weekend, but yet another Santa Ana event is likely next week.

Tuesday night, a historic wind event swept through Southern California, spreading horrifying fires that torched a dense urban patchwork of homes, institutions and businesses. The multiple fires in greater Los Angeles have produced only two deaths so far, somewhat mercifully. But the windstorm is expected to continue, and already much of Pacific Palisades has burned to an unrecognizable gray. A decade ago, this kind of disaster seemed unthinkably rare. In retrospect, Canada’s 2016 Fort McMurray disaster, which formed the basis of John Vaillant’s book “Fire Weather,” was the beginning of a frightening new era. Then came Santa Rosa, Paradise, Boulder and Lahaina — the deadliest North American fire in more than a century, if one that now hardly stands out in cultural memory against the other scars of urban firestorms. In neighborhoods like these, often far from the wildland-urban interface, it’s almost impossible to clear enough brush to make homes defensible, as the wildfire expert Zeke Lunder noted on Tuesday. The homes provide the fuel, and the fires jump from house to house. These years of fire have also initiated a set of arguments about its driving factors — to what extent the new disaster landscape is the result of climate conditions or fuel buildup from decades of fire suppression and to what extent building and population patterns have pushed more people into the path of fire. At times like this, for better or for worse, those arguments and their policy implications feel less urgent than the sheer scale of the wreckage and the simple and obvious lesson: We are not prepared. “There’s no number of helicopters or trucks that we can buy, no number of firefighters that we can have, no amount of brush that we can clear that will stop this,” Eric Garcetti, then the mayor of Los Angeles, told me in 2019. “The only thing that will stop this is when the earth, probably long after we’re gone, relaxes into a more predictable weather state.” Seven of the eight largest wildfires in California history have burned since then.

Dr. Vivek Murthy served two terms as U.S. Surgeon General—first under former President Obama, then under President Biden. During his tenure, Murthy was a calm and reassuring voice during COVID-19, one of the biggest health challenges the country has faced in recent years. But most of the time, the "nation's doctor" highlighted public-health issues that usually fly under the radar: loneliness, gun violence, the dangers of social media, overwhelming parental stress. As he prepares to leave office, Murthy wrote a "parting prescription" for the country, reflecting what he feels Americans need most to become healthier and happier. In an interview (lightly edited for clarity and length), Murthy shared with TIME his learnings and his hopes for the health of the nation. TIME: Is a "parting prescription" a tradition for Surgeon Generals to leave behind? Murthy: It’s not a tradition that I’m aware of. But for me, this was important to do. I realized over two terms that there were critical questions I have been grappling with. What was driving the deeper pain, the unhappiness I was seeing for years across the country? Branded Content XPRIZE at the 2025 TIME100 Summit: Making the Impossible, Possible By XPRIZE I wanted to lay out some of the answers I have found and the path I hope we can travel down as a country to help us be healthier, happier, and more fulfilled. To me, this is the synthesis of the most important learnings that I have taken away from conversations with people all across the country, and from science and research that I have seen over my two terms. In your prescription, you focus on the need to rebuild a sense of community. How do you define community? Community is a place where we have relationships, help each other, and where we find purpose in each other. Those three elements are the core pillars of community. Community is also a place fueled by a core virtue: that’s love, which manifests in generosity, kindnesses, and courage. When you put these together, then you have a place where people find a sense of belonging and meaning. What I have found over my two terms is that for many people, that sense of community has eroded. We have millions of Americans struggling with loneliness: a third of adults and half of young people. People’s participation in both formal and informal service remains low. And more than half of young adults in a recent survey said they felt either low or no sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. To me, these are all red flags. They are warning signs telling us that the fundamental elements we need to live fulfilling lives are vanishing and getting weaker. If we don’t do something about them, it may not matter that we have the best policy proposals or are making big financial investments in communities. People won’t thrive the way they need to. What effect does that have on the public’s health? As community is deteriorating or diminishing in people’s lives, we are starting to see many different manifestations of that. Some involve mental health; others are physical-health related. We are also seeing that when people struggle with loneliness and isolation, it impacts their productivity and engagement at work, and also how kids do in school. When community is weak, we are more easily polarized, divided, and turned against each other. There is a lot of frustration and even anger now about inequities and barriers in the U.S. health care system, from drug pricing to coverage, as evidenced by the reaction to the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. How do we address those challenges? One of the biggest challenges in any job, including a job like the Surgeon General, is picking which issues to focus on. We had to make some tough choices at the beginning about how to pick among many worthy issues. My thinking has been, where are we uniquely as an office positioned to be able to pull back the curtain on an issue, work out a strategy, and solve a problem? Where can our voice make a unique contribution? Read More: Even Small Amounts of Alcohol Can Cause Cancer, Surgeon General Says I saw very clearly in my first term that mental health was a profound challenge for the country, and it continued to get worse, particularly for young people. I knew coming into the second term that while COVID-19 was a major public-health emergency, the pandemic would make the mental-health struggles we were seeing even worse—so we needed to focus on that as much as possible. Part of what I tried to do was widen the lens through which we look at health by recognizing that mental health and social health are also part our well-being and impact each other, as well as our physical health. If we want people to be healthy and want to support their well-being, we’ve got to understand and support all three dimensions. You oversaw one of the biggest public health threats in our country’s history. Have any lessons from COVID-19 changed U.S. health care for the better? We learned a lot from the pandemic. The government learned a lot about how to produce and distribute vaccines much more rapidly than we thought perhaps ever possible. We learned how to work with industry to rapidly develop treatments and get them out to people. Where I have the greatest concern is that what we saw during the pandemic was that health misinformation spread rapidly, and many people didn’t know who to trust. But what we did find was that trust in friends, family members, and individual doctors, nurses, and local health departments often remained healthy, even though trust in larger institutions may have eroded. Read More: 10 Questions to Ask Yourself at the Start of a New Year To me, that means we have to invest a lot more in doing the hard work to build local connections between doctors, nurses, local health departments and hospitals, and the communities they serve. Those local relationships are going to become central to future pandemics, where misinformation will likely continue to swirl online. A lot of that is contingent on both the government and private sector being able to get accurate information out to people in a timely and trustworthy way. How can health officials rebuild the public’s trust in science and health institutions? We have to ask ourselves how we can do better so people don’t feel judged when they have a different point of view, and how we can be even more transparent with the reasoning behind decisions or recommendations. How do we build a stronger relationship with the public, and how do we do that not just during a crisis but in between? When we have a relationship with the public, they come to know people in institutions, how an institution functions, and how it makes decisions. It doesn’t guarantee that people will trust them, but it increases the chances significantly that when you do have a crisis, even if people disagree with a recommendation, they understand why you did it and are at least open to hearing about the reasoning behind the process. How can we as a country start to build community? When people are not invested in each other, it makes it hard to come together and advocate for and support the policy solutions that we need. If I don’t have children, and don’t know people who have children—or if I’m not caring for an aging parent or don’t know people who are—then I won’t go out to advocate for safer schools and home care. But if I am connected to my neighbors, friends, and family, then their concerns become my concerns. What’s next for you after you leave the Surgeon General’s office? I don’t 100% know what I’m going to do next. What I do know for sure is that the issues I worked on over the last two terms—and in particular, the question of how we rebuild community and the social fabric of our country and the world—will remain central issues to me. I see these as issues we have to address if we want to make the world more hospitable and more nourishing for our kids. I asked my kids, who are 6 and 8, what I should do after being Surgeon General. It probably says something about me that I’m looking for career advice from a 6 and 8 year old. They looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Papa, we think you should spend more time playing with us.’ I thought that was the right advice. Read More: What Makes a Friendship Last Forever? I find myself learning a lot by watching my kids. I find that kids, especially when they are really young, tend to be authentic, vulnerable, and also kind and generous. They also tend have an appreciation for the simple wonders in life. I realized that those are the things I want to recenter my life on as well. I want to rediscover the wonder of the simple things in life. I want to experience gratitude more and more in my day-to-day life. I want to figure out how to cultivate more generosity, love, and kindness in my own life—and figure out how to support and nurture that in world around me. There are a lot of big challenges we face as a country. But I think these moments of great change and uncertainty can also be powerful moments for us to ask the question: how can we live better lives, how can we make changes to create a better world for our children? Those are the questions I want us to grapple with now. If we do that, then I feel very optimistic that we have what it takes to create a community all us deeply need in our lives, and ultimately help us find the fulfillment we all seek.

With arctic air still locked in place across the East, the next winter storm is poised to bring a treacherous mix of snow, sleet, ice and freezing rain to the South and possibly the Mid-Atlantic, which once again could potentially disrupt travel and daily life for millions of people in the coming days. The National Weather Service has issued winter storm warnings across northern Texas, southeast Oklahoma and Arkansas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth and Little Rock, Ark. areas. Additional winter storm watches cover an area from northern Texas to Tennessee and Kentucky, including northern parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Forecasters warned of hazardous travel conditions and potential disruptions to daily life in these areas. The storm is arriving just days after the first major winter storm of the year disrupted life in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, delaying or canceling more than 9,000 flights, causing accidents resulting in at least three deaths, and leaving more than 200,000 customers without power amid states of emergencies in several areas. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT This winter storm is expected to begin on Wednesday along the Gulf Coast before moving northeast in an elongated path from Texas to the Carolinas, bringing a mix of snow, sleet, ice and freezing rain. What to expect: Snow, ice and freezing rain The first signs of winter weather will arrive on Wednesday night, with light snow developing over western Texas, moving into Dallas by Thursday morning. The true impact is set to unfold Thursday into Friday, as a more potent system strengthens along the Gulf Coast and combines with arctic air spilling southward.The exact path the storm takes out of the Gulf of Mexico will have a direct impact on what type of winter precipitation falls and where. Heavy snow is anticipated through Thursday in north-central and northeast Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Fort Worth office of the Weather Service predicts areas in northern Texas may receive isolated totals in excess of eight inches, but more widely two to four is expected and only light snow for central Texas. Similar totals are forecast for southeastern Oklahoma, where some areas could see up to six inches of snow by Friday. Arkansas is also in the storm’s path, with central parts of the state, just south of the Interstate 40, is forecast to receive the highest snowfall amounts at up to eight inches from Friday into the weekend. Editors’ Picks Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? How to Manage Your Blood Sugar With Exercise Heavy amounts of snowfall are also likely for northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, northern Georgia, Tennessee and the far west of North Carolina, with up to six inches possible. A wintry mix of freezing rain,sleet and ice are also forecast, from central Texas, the north of Louisiana and central parts of Mississippi and Alabama, creating a patchwork of wintry conditions, though specific amounts are hard to pinpoint this far in advance, Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center, said on Tuesday. “There’s still some uncertainty once you get east of Mississippi,” he said. In Georgia, where a winter storm watch is in effect from Friday, the precise precipitation type is still uncertain Forecasters are also concerned the storm may take a more southern track, producing large totals of snow in the north, where up to six inches or more was forecast, but also bringing a mix of sleet, snow and freezing rain to the Atlanta metro area and around the Interstate 20 corridor, from northern Louisiana to Georgia and South Carolina. From Friday, the storm is also forecast to bring snowfall to areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, the north of Mississippi and Alabama and into North Carolina and possibly South Carolina. According to Tennessee’s current Weather Service forecast, the south may potentially accumulate more than six inches of snow. Mr. Mullinax said that if Memphis exceeds six inches, it will be the first time in almost 40 years that the city has had a two-day snow total greater than that. Into Friday night, the storm is likely to bring snow to the Mid-Atlantic, as well as some light sleet or freezing rain across eastern North Carolina. By Saturday afternoon the storm will have mostly cleared into the Atlantic. Travel hazards and disruption The Weather Service cautioned that areas in the path of the storm are likely to face travel disruptions and hazards from the wintry weather. On Thursday roads in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Dallas Fort Worth, Little Rock and the Texas Hill Country may be treacherous. Wintry travel conditions are likely to affect other metro areas on Friday too, including Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Huntsville, Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville. Saturday is likely to see less snowfall, yet travel may still be challenging from snow on the ground and ice, from northern Georgia to parts of South Carolina and North Carolina. While some snow amounts remain uncertain, forecasters at the Weather Service said major impacts from the winter storm were likely to be greatest from portions of North Texas into southeastern Oklahoma,central Arkansas and into northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee. “With the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex averaging just 1.8 inches of snow per season, this storm could be a rare and disruptive event,” Mr. Mullinax said. It is likely that other places recently hit by this weekend’s snowstorm could face the potential for another round of winter weather in the Mid-Atlantic. Forecasters said they had increasing confidence that a light snowfall accumulations across the Mid-Atlantic, leading to light accumulations for areas.

Southern California is extremely dry right now, with huge portions of the region having seen less than a quarter-inch of rain in the last eight months. The landscape is parched and vegetation is withered, making the area dangerously susceptible to burning, an unusual situation for January. “The sort of dryness we’re seeing in a lot of the plant species right now mirrors what you would typically expect in October or early November, when the rainy season starts,” said Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service. Wildfires are a year-round threat in California. But a good soaking of rain in fall or at the start of winter usually puts an end to the peak part of wildfire season, when the most destructive wildfires typically occur. About two inches of rain is required to saturate the ground and vegetation and significantly lower the wildfire risk. Northern California has received that much and a lot more recently, thanks to a series of powerful storms in November and December. Southern California generally trends drier than in the north, but the region has usually received a shot or two of rain by the end of December, and certainly by early January. Not this year. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The region’s dry start to winter comes after a summer marked by prolonged, record-breaking heat that baked the landscape and cooked the trees and brush. The National Weather Service gauge in downtown Los Angeles, a good indicator for rainfall in Southern California, has recorded only 0.29 inches of rain since May 1, 2024. This is the second-least amount of rain ever measured in this roughly eight-month time period, with records going back to 1877.

As strong winds spread the Pacific Palisades fire on Tuesday afternoon, the residents of some of the region’s mansions and desirable homes were forced to evacuate, including some well-known actors and people who work in the entertainment industry. Among the celebrities forced to react quickly was the actor James Woods, who shared videos on social media showing the billowing smoke and flames in the hills behind his home. “We are safe and out,” Mr. Woods said in a post on X. “There are several elementary schools in our neighborhood and there was an enormous community effort to evacuate the children safely.” In one video, Mr. Woods said that he was standing in his driveway preparing to evacuate and that there were planes flying over the area dropping water. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Steve Guttenberg, the actor known for his work in “Police Academy” and other films and who lives in the area, was among the people helping local officials respond to the fire. Mr. Guttenberg briefly appeared on KTLA 5, a local news station, urging residents who were fleeing to leave the keys to their cars in their vehicles so he and others could move them and make space for the fire engines that needed to reach the area. “People take their keys with them as if they’re in a parking lot,” Mr. Guttenberg said. “We really need people to move their cars.” Mr. Guttenberg explained that he had friends who were unable to evacuate because of increasing traffic on Palisades Drive. “There are families up there, there are pets up there,” he said. “There are people who really need help.”

Officials were bracing for winds to pick up overnight in the Los Angeles area, likely fanning the Palisades fire and creating conditions for other wildfires to spread across Southern California. Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said that some of the strongest winds were expected in Southern California between 10 p.m. local time through 5 a.m. on Wednesday. “By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods,” Governor Newsom said. The fire, which had already affected about 1,200 acres, more than doubled in size to 2,900 acres in a matter of hours by Tuesday evening, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.The National Weather Service office that serves the Los Angeles area said that it had received dozens of reports of strong winds across Southern California, including some wind gusts that were greater than 70 miles per hour. Forecasters warned that the winds could be even stronger overnight. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Los Angeles Fire Department asked its employees on Tuesday evening to check in and report whether they were available. At least 200 firefighters worked throughout the day to contain the Palisades fire. Officials also warned that in addition to fueling wildfires, the winds could also ground helicopters and other aircraft that were being used to help contain the fire with retardant from above and provide aerial reconnaissance. By 7 p.m. local time, concerns about having to ground aircraft had already been realized. Aircraft that were being used to put out the Palisades fire were temporarily grounded as winds picked up in the Los Angeles area, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Officials were monitoring conditions to see when aircraft could resume operations. Earlier in the afternoon, Chief Anthony Marrone of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said at the news conference that lower temperatures overnight could help.“But with increased wind speed, aerial firefighting becomes more dangerous,” Chief Marrone said. “If the winds are going to get worse right now, it’s going to be very difficult for our aerial assets to actually make a difference for the folks on the ground.” As the news conference ended, Chief Kristin Crowley of the Los Angeles Fire Department urged residents in the area to be prepared in case they were ordered to evacuate later on Tuesday. Chief Crowley said that the wind conditions were dynamic and that they could “quickly change on a dime.”