Public schools in Montclair, N.J., were closed on Monday after a teacher at an elementary school threatened its principal on social media, the police said. Several hours later, the school district announced that the potential threat had been “neutralized.” The teacher, Amir Doctry, was arrested in Philadelphia on Monday morning and charged with making terroristic threats, a spokesman for the Montclair Police Department, Lt. Terence Turner, said. Mr. Doctry, a teacher at Northeast Elementary School, was put on administrative leave last week when he started showing signs of “erratic behavior,” Lieutenant Turner said. Mr. Doctry was in a “manic state” when he was apprehended and taken to a Philadelphia hospital for a psychological evaluation, Lieutenant Turner added. The Montclair Police Department said it was increasing patrols around all schools out of an abundance of caution. The department added that there was “no further danger” to Montclair, a township in Essex County, N.J., that is about 20 miles from New York City by car. Mr. Doctry is listed as a “long-term teacher” on the school district’s website, but he was not listed as a staff member in the Northeast Elementary School’s directory as of Monday afternoon. A LinkedIn profile for a user with his name says that he owns a business geared toward creating virtual-reality lessons for students and that he previously taught sixth-graders in Montclair and students in Newark. Not long after the school district announced the school closure on Monday, parents began to speculate that it was connected to a YouTube video featuring Mr. Doctry. Lieutenant Turner confirmed the connection in an interview. In the video, Mr. Doctry can be seen holding up a letterman jacket and saying that he believed he would be promoted to school superintendent and planned to get the title “superintendent” stitched onto the jacket once that happened. “That is how confident I am that I am going to be the new superintendent of Montclair Public Schools,” he said. He later added: “We need change. That is the whole point,” before making a series of remarks about artificial intelligence. The video’s lengthy caption contained a string of profane, political and racist assertions. It read, in part: “Joe must die school shooting Montclair school shooting kills Dr. Joe Racsim Racist Joe is dead. He dies tonight.” The school’s principal is listed as Dr. Joseph Putrino. Lieutenant Turner confirmed that Dr. Putrino, who did not respond to a request for comment, was the target of the threat. Damen Cooper, the interim superintendent of Montclair Public Schools, had said in an email to parents early Monday that the district became aware of the potential threat late Sunday night and had decided to close schools to be safe. “I understand that this last-minute closure may cause inconvenience, but the safety of our students, staff, and entire school community is our highest priority,” the email said. Several hours later, Mr. Cooper advised the community that the potential threat had been “neutralized,” thanks to a collaboration with the Police Department. Matthew Frankel, who has two children in Montclair public schools, one of whom was tutored by Mr. Doctry during the pandemic, said the news had been a “shock to the system.” “There was transparency within our community, and I think in a moment of crisis, that’s what we want as parents,” he said. “In terms of how we feel about this teacher, and even speculating on his mental state, I think the most important thing that we can do is to let the authorities do their job.”

The Education Department announced on Monday that it had canceled student loans for more than 150,000 borrowers, bringing the tally of Americans whose loans were forgiven under President Biden to over five million. The Biden administration reached the milestone even though many of its more ambitious plans to overhaul the nation’s system for administering student debt faltered over the past two years, forcing the administration to slowly but steadily process applications for relief through established channels created by Congress. The latest cancellations were most likely the administration’s final round of relief. They covered borrowers who have worked in public service for at least 10 years, students who had applied after being defrauded or misled by their school, and some students with disabilities. With Monday’s authorization and 27 previous ones, the Biden administration has canceled more than $183 billion in outstanding student loans. “Since Day 1 of my administration, I promised to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity, and I’m proud to say we have forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. Mr. Biden will leave office next week with many of his boldest ambitions for student debt reform stymied, after a wave of legal challenges brought by Republican attorneys general chipped away at plans that once envisioned student loan forgiveness for over 40 million people. After its initial strategy of canceling debt through emergency powers tied to the Covid-19 pandemic was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2023, the administration attempted a variety of other tacks, including waiving interest on loans that had piled up for several decades. Mr. Biden had also sought to sharply reduce the monthly payments that borrowers made on their loans with a generous new repayment plan, known as SAVE, that also qualified borrowers to have their full balances forgiven after making payments for a set period. But opposition to those tactics mounted as well, and legal challenges brought by Republican states led to repeated setbacks, with federal judges stalling most of the administration’s programs even as borrowers flocked to enroll in them.During a call with reporters on Monday, officials said they expected that the programs used to authorize the latest cancellations, including the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and borrower defense to repayment, would continue to be open to applicants into the next administration. But it was far from clear whether the Education Department would continue to administer those programs under the Trump administration. Both President-elect Donald J. Trump and the America First Policy Institute, where his pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon, has served as a chair, have been intensely critical of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness policies. And while lawmakers would have to pass legislation to change or eliminate the programs in question, their implementation by the Education Department could be restricted or deprioritized as they were under Mr. Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos. In recent months, officials have instead turned to celebrating the more limited progress they made using programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness to their full potential. After the program was enacted in 2007, bureaucratic obstacles and poor coordination made it almost impossible for borrowers to navigate. Just around 7,000 people had successfully applied for forgiveness under that law when Mr. Biden took office. “The system was broken,” Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona told reporters on Monday. “And when these borrowers reached out for help, the previous administration showed little interest in fixing it.”

Los Angeles residents are facing another round of fire danger as gusty Santa Ana winds were expected to intensify once again over the next few days. The National Weather Service had warned these winds could lead to “explosive fire growth,” prompting forecasters to issue rare, “particularly dangerous situation” warnings for parts of Ventura and Los Angeles Counties for Tuesday and Wednesday. But by early Tuesday afternoon, the winds were proving to be a little weaker than anticipated, prompting the Weather Service to temporarily drop the dangerous situation designation. They believe winds may pick back up again, though, so the warning will go back into effect on Wednesday from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. Key things to know about the forecast Though Tuesday’s winds were less strong than anticipated, they were still powerful, and red flag warnings remained in effect. A “particularly dangerous situation” warning, one of the strongest the Weather Service has in its arsenal, will be in effect again from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday. A weather system moving in on Thursday is likely to bring conditions that will help firefighters in their efforts to gain control of the blazes, but forecasters warned of another possible wind event early next week. The region remains critically dry and is not expected to see significant rainfall until at least next month. By Tuesday afternoon, the strongest sustained winds were moving through Ventura County valleys at nearly 30 m.p.h., and while the mountains had seen gusts reach over 70 m.p.h. The winds were generally lighter than the worst-case scenario that forecasters had anticipated, but they warned there could still be a more significant increase in wind speeds on Wednesday. The Weather Service began using the “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning in recent years to alert firefighters to types of conditions where fires are more likely to spread, said Todd Hall, a meteorologist at the Weather Service in Los Angeles. The intention had been to use them once every three to five years, he said; two have been issued in the last week. In addition, across the wider region, longer-term warnings for fire weather from the Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center have been upgraded to “extreme,” the highest classification. In areas such as Ventura Valley and the San Bernardino Mountains, wind gusts exceeding 50 m.p.h. will combine with extremely dry air to create hazardous conditions from through Wednesday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Monday announced her intention to limit access to cellphones in schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade as part of her latest push to address children’s reliance on the devices. In a statement, which provided no other details, the governor said she would include the legislation in her proposal for next fiscal year’s budget. She billed the initiative as a follow-up to one of her key achievements last year, the passage of legislation designed to protect young people from addictive algorithms on social media. She cited a Pew Research poll that showed 72 percent of high school teachers described students being distracted by cellphones as a “major problem.” “Young people succeed in the classroom when they’re learning and growing — not clicking and scrolling,” Governor Hochul said Monday. “My upcoming budget proposal will put forth a new statewide standard for distraction-free learning in schools across our state.” Speaking to high school and college students at Hudson Valley Community College on Monday, the governor acknowledged that restricting cellphone use might make her “very unpopular.” Los Angeles Unified became the largest school district in the United States to ban cellphones last year. Virginia, Ohio and Minnesota are among the states that have moved to crack down on the devices in schools. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams backed away from a plan to ban cellphones in schools in August, saying the city wasn’t “there yet.” In September, New York State United Teachers, the state teachers’ union, called for a “bell-to-bell” policy that would restrict cellphone use from first period to dismissal. The union’s president, Melinda Person, has said that the union was working closely with the governor to craft a plan. But the idea has its detractors as well. Some New York parents who were students during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have expressed reservations about losing the ability to contact their children in an emergency. Principals have questioned who would foot the bill for equipment to collect phones. And some teachers have wondered how they would be expected to discipline students who broke the rules. In a statement on Monday, a spokeswoman for the United Federation of Teachers, New York City’s teachers’ union, said that the organization supported state and city restrictions on cellphones in public schools, as long as a number of conditions were met. The union said teachers should not be responsible for enforcing the restrictions; school districts should shoulder the cost instead of individual schools; enforcement should be consistent from student to student; and schools should have emergency contact lines set up for parents. Many of New York City’s more than 1,500 public schools already restrict cellphone use. Some middle schools require children to place their phones in cubbies along the walls of their classrooms. Many high schools hand out locked fabric pouches for phones that students carry in their bags throughout the school day. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a state senator who represents a large swath of the West Side of Manhattan, introduced a bill last week that would prohibit students from accessing their phones on school property. He said he saw his bill as a starting point for a conversation in the State Senate. He said he hoped that the governor’s plan would include a way for students to safely and securely hand over their phones and then get them back at the end of the day. “As a parent of a 14-year-old daughter, I understand how phones are an obstacle in the learning environment,” Senator Hoylman-Sigal said. “At the same time, I appreciate that parents want their children to have phones when they’re on the subway or on a bus. So I hope the governor’s proposal embraces both of those needs.” Speaking at the community college on Monday, Governor Hochul described hearing from students who told her about how they struggled to put away their phones because they are feared they would “miss something.” “There’s so much pressure on all of you, and I’ve got to help you with that,” she told the students. “That’s my job.”

If you’re tracking wildfires or the weather conditions that make them possible, you may have come across some terms you don’t recognize. Here’s what they mean. Watches and Warnings Fire watches and warnings are issued by the 122 local National Weather Service forecast offices across the United States. Forecast offices maintain criteria specific to their areas of coverage that are developed in consultation with land and fire managers, the federal, state or other bodies — such as the U.S. Forest Service — that study a particular place’s vulnerability to fire. The criteria used to determine whether a local forecast office issues a watch or a warning can include, among other factors, the likelihood of lightning (which can ignite a fire), high winds and low humidity.Watches and warnings don’t predict wildfires, but they do predict the conditions that are conducive to their formation or spread. They can take two forms: Fire weather watch: This alert is issued when there is a “high potential for the development of a Red Flag event” in 18 to 96 hours. “The overall intent of a fire weather watch is to alert users at least a day in advance for the purpose of resource allocation and firefighter safety,” according to Weather Service policy. Red flag warning: This more serious alert describes an “impending, or occurring Red Flag Event,” indicating “a high degree of confidence that weather and fuel conditions consistent with local red flag event criteria will occur in 48 hours or less.” The term has been used by the Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since the 1960s, according to a NOAA fact sheet. Fire weather watches and red flag warnings can be issued several times a year, in some cases in quick succession during a single weather event, in fire-prone areas, said Robyn Heffernan, a fire weather services senior adviser at the National Interagency Fire Center.Much more rarely, forecasters can advise of a “particularly dangerous situation” within a forecast, she added. This kind of description is made “if an office feels like this is an extreme event where the criteria for issuance is greatly exceeded, or we’re near record levels or at record levels,” Ms. Heffernan said. Before this fire season, the Weather Service’s Los Angeles office had used that designation only twice, both for warnings in 2020. Since November, it has issued them four times. Fire Weather Outlooks The Storm Prediction Center, a part of the National Weather Service that monitors for severe weather events like thunderstorms, tornadoes and winter weather, also identifies areas where there is a “significant threat for the ignition and/or spread of wildfires” in the near future, according to a description of its products published by NOAA. Fire weather outlooks are broader in scope and are intended to provide guidance for forecasters and to “aid land management agencies in determining large-scale areas of fire danger risk,” according to Weather Service policy. They are not warning products, Ms. Heffernan said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Storm Prediction Center describes five kinds of fire risk. For the center to label an area with a given risk level, the area must satisfy several criteria for weather and the potential for fueling fires. The first three pertain to how actively a fire may burn: Fire weather risk is described as “elevated” when “we know that the fuels are dry and that the weather is conducive for fire activity,” Ms. Heffernan said. Fire weather risk is described as “critical” when “we know that if a fire starts in that area, it is going to be difficult to contain,” she said. Fire weather risk is described as “extremely critical” when “there are going to be very limited fire tactics that are going to be able to be employed on that fire because the weather is so overwhelming,” such as during a Santa Ana wind event, she said. There are also two risk levels that pertain to the potential for a new fire to be ignited (it would be rare, though not impossible, for the two types of fire risk to coincide, Ms. Heffernan said): An outlook of “isolated dry thunderstorms” is issued based on the whether a potential fire has fuel to spread (determined through drought, rainfall and vegetation data, for example) and the presence of isolated cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, according to Weather Service directives. This is equivalent to an elevated fire weather threat. An outlook of “scattered (critical) dry thunderstorms” is issued based on a potential fire’s fuel conditions and the presence of scattered-to-numerous cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. This is equivalent to a critical fire weather threat.

For nearly half a century, NASA has been talking an awfully good game about its much-heralded Mars Sample Return (MSR) project. As long ago as 1978, the space agency requested funding to develop a mission that would see an uncrewed spacecraft land on the Red Planet, collect and cache samples of rock and soil, and bring them back to Earth for study—all without the risk and expense of sending human crews out to do the spelunking. But tight budgets and challenging technology meant that it was not until 2009 that NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), finally got the mission rolling. Even then, it would take 12 years for the first phase of MSR to at last fly. On Feb. 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars and began collecting soil, rock, and atmospheric samples in 30 sterile, cigar-sized, titanium tubes. Now, four years later, the entire mission—generations in the making and billions in the funding—may be coming undone. During a Jan. 7 press conference, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson conceded that costs have exploded, deadlines have unraveled, and unless MSR receives a major rethink now, there may be neither will nor wallet to fly the long-awaited mission to collect the Mars rover’s sample tubes. “As that plan had proceeded, it continued to be delayed as to when we would get the samples back, and the cost began to accelerate to the point that earlier this past year, it was thought that it could be as much as $11 billion and you would not even get the samples back till 2040,” Nelson says. “Well, that was just simply unacceptable.” Though Nelson declared flatly that he had as a result, “pulled the plug on [the mission] as it’s currently envisioned,” things are not quite that grave. Last April, NASA went quietly seeking private partners, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, which could help provide hardware and defray costs. Whether MSR indeed reaches fruition, the project’s current woes are a cautionary tale of what happens when a mission gets too complex and too costly, with incomplete planning being done before hardware actually begins flying. MSR was by no means the only job Perseverance has had on Mars, and the rover has been an unalloyed success so far in studying soil, atmosphere, and terrain. But getting samples back to Earth was nonetheless one of its major goals. The biggest problem with MSR was always that it simply had too many moving parts. In a perfect and parsimonious world, a single two-stage spacecraft would land on Mars, scoop up soil samples in situ, and transfer them to an ascent stage which would blast off into orbit. There, the samples would be transferred again, this time to a second orbiting spacecraft, equipped with an Earth-transit module which would carry the soil and rock back home. Colloquially called a grab-and-go mission, this is the flight profile China is planning for its Tianwen-3 mission, now scheduled for launch to Mars in 2028. The downside of grab-and-go is that you get just one sample from one site, which limits the science you can do. NASA has instead sent Perseverance to multiple spots around its Jezero Crater landing zone—a site that billions of years ago was an inland sea that may have hosted life. There the rover has collected samples from different elevations with different chemical makeups and left the titanium tubes tubes scattered in its path like geological Easter eggs. “To find different samples of different layers showing different ages of material and rocks,” says Nelson, “it's going to give quite a history of what Mars was like billions of years ago, when there was water in the lake.” The problem is, bringing those samples home required multiple other spacecraft, none of which have been firmly designed or contracted yet, much less built. For starters, scattering the samples requires collecting the samples, which calls for another fetch rover, able to follow in Perseverance’s path, gather up the tubes, and then transfer them to yet a third lander capable of taking off from the surface, and transferring the tubes to a fourth orbiting transit ship, built by the ESA, that would bring the tubes home. Not only did that break the bank at $11 billion, it also broke the schedule, with the collection and return phase not happening until the mid to late 2030s. And none of that was helped by the fact that NASA saw a total $5 billion budget cut over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, slowing R&D even further. “This thing had gotten out of control,” says Nelson. “You simply can’t do everything you want to do with less dollars.” But if MSR as originally envisioned is dead, MSR as an ultimate goal isn’t. NASA is currently seeking private company solicitations to land the fetch vehicle and ascent vehicle on Mars, taking advantage of competitive pricing that could assign the job of sending the surface hardware to Mars to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster, which has had a total of 11 launches, or to a Blue Origin New Glenn booster, which scrubbed a planned maiden launch on Jan. 13 due to technical issues and has not yet rescheduled its next attempt. The two rockets’ propulsive muscle would allow them to land relatively heavy collection and ascent vehicles on Mars. The other alternative involves NASA keeping more of the work in-house. Like the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, the sample collection vehicle and Mars ascent vehicle could be landed on the surface by a “sky-crane,” a rocket-powered chassis that hovers about 20 meters (66 ft.) above the Martian surface and lowers the vehicles to the ground by cable. The limited power of the sky crane would require a smaller, lighter—not to mention cheaper—collection vehicle and ascent stage and allow for a smaller, cheaper booster to get the mission started. Under either scenario, the ascent vehicle would still rely on an Earth-transit ship built by the ESA to carry the samples home. Both missions would cost somewhere between an estimated $5.8 billion and $7.7 billion. “That’s a far cry from the $11 billion,” says Nelson. Flying cheaper means flying sooner—at least a little—with Nelson projecting that the missions could begin as early as 2030 when the European return vehicle would launch, followed in 2035 by the fetch vehicle and the ascent vehicle. Politics, as ever in a federally bankrolled program, will play a role in all of this. Nelson and the outgoing NASA team have not yet discussed Mars Sample Return with Jared Isaacman, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for the next NASA administrator, much less with Trump himself. But Nelson remains hopeful. “We have not had those conversations,” he says, “but I think it’s a responsible thing to do if they want to have a Mars Sample Return [and] I can’t imagine they don’t. I don’t think they want the only sample return coming back on the Chinese spacecraft.”

I’d like to put forth January for worst month of the year. February requires you to trudge through only 28 or so frigid days, with the promise of spring on the other side. December had parties and procrastination and excuses to suspend conventions like meals per day (third dinner) and portion size (a cocktail fit for Ina Garten). In January, you’re staring down 31 bleak days, the legal limit, with no hope of things turning around any time soon. Ideally, I’d like to see January wiped off the calendar, but one must endure it. Over the years, from my berth in the Northeast, I’ve developed a survival guide to ensure I make it to Valentine’s Day. Start with your hands, which I trust look terrible by this point. I categorize hand creams in progressive levels, similar to the DEFCON model of military readiness. We begin with Level 3: an everyday variety from the likes of Jergens or Lubriderm, moisturizing yet light enough to be swiftly absorbed into the hands, so you can apply it and then leave your home. Then again, how many times are you actually leaving your home in January? Proceed to Level 2, where you have options: a neon green tub called O’Keeffe’s Working Hands, or a slightly darker green tube called Weleda Skin Food. The names signal we’re getting serious. They’re heavy enough to take some time to sink in, but not so incapacitating as to prevent you from scrolling fantasy flights to Miami. The pinnacle, Level 1, can be applied only right before bed, or any time you get that January feeling of “It would take an actual DEFCON 1 situation [imminent or current nuclear war] to get me to leave this spot on my couch.” That’s the occasion for Eucerin Original Healing Cream, spackle for the skin. Apply to your hands, your elbows, probably not your feet — they’re simply too far gone. Wear socks until spring. Do not move until the thick white goop recedes into your sad winter skin. It could be days. A joke about Go-Gurt from an old Ellen DeGeneres special comes to mind. “Was there a big mobility problem with yogurt before?” she asks, then mimes picking up the phone and receiving an invitation from a friend. Moments later, spirits falling, she remembers she’s just opened a traditional yogurt that must be eaten with a spoon. Having committed to the complex task at hand, she obviously can’t make the date. Eucerin Original Healing Cream is the yogurt-with-a-spoon of January. As Ms. DeGeneres says, you’re in for the night. Apply when your skin is very dry, or when you have a social event you want an excuse to bail on. The next part of my survival guide is medically ill advised, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. It starts with a space heater recommended by a trusted website, which worked well, except for the part when it shot out sparks in my kid’s room. Or did it? I willed myself to forget the maybe sparking — so chilly in there! — until my husband plugged it in one day, smelled the singe and observed the cord melting. Then all the lights in the house went out. I imagine the blown circuit was for the best. While he trod down to our basement, I did the cost-benefit analysis: warmth versus risk of death. I came out somewhere in the middle. Now I use our other space heater only when I’m alone and in my office, so the danger is confined to me. My husband and children will live on, and they’ll be chillier for it.Space heaters are conventional, though. My greatest achievement, while it lasted, was my heating pad. It felt so innovative — how many people use a heating pad for daily warmth, comfort and, if I’m being honest, some degree of companionship? I researched and ordered and returned until I found what I was looking for: a medical-grade device that probably shouldn’t be legal in the United States. This thing gets hot, especially if you remove the outer covering to reveal the inner layer emblazoned with a warning that says in all caps, “Never use pad without cover in place.” I ignored this. I mainly wrapped the delicious heating pad around my hands. Four Januarys ago, I developed a condition called chilblains, which is when your fingers basically cease to function in response to cold. It’s grim. Your digits feel like ice. They swell, then split. Then things get really gross. My husband thought I must have accidentally shut my hand in a door. The dermatologist told me it was chronic. But he didn’t know about the power of my 75-watt heating pad. I carried that thing around the house. When it started acting a little wonky I bought two more as an insurance policy, bracing for the inevitable day it would be banned domestically. My skin condition was in remission for two winters. I was sure I’d bested it. I’m not sure why this January has done me in already. Was it our new puppy, who requires me to wrest off my mittens and face the elements approximately 800 times a day as we try, and fail, to house train her? Was it karma for flagrantly removing the heating pad’s outer cover? Whatever the reason, the cold and swelling returned to my fingers. I ramped up use of my heating pad in turn. Simultaneously, I began to develop a spiderweb-like rash on my thighs. It lit up red in the shower. I connected the rash to the fact that the heating pad sits squarely on my lap while I’m treating my fingers, but I didn’t really care — until my husband, a physician, informed me I might be doing permanent damage. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It seemed I had given myself a new condition, the evocatively named toasted-skin syndrome. A different dermatologist (on Instagram this time) told me it was forever. I unplugged the heating pad but couldn’t stop eyeing it. My fingers were so cold. I started to feel that there were only bad choices: Heat away the chilblains and give myself toasted-skin syndrome, or leave my fingers to wilt and preserve my milky thighs. I made it two days before plugging the heating pad back in, cursing myself for throwing out the protective cover years ago. A while back, the cartoonist Roz Chast drew a New Yorker cover that represents a January calendar. Each day contains a typical seasonal entry. “Lose keys in snow.” “Slip on ice.” “Still January.” (That last one’s on Jan. 3.) Jan. 31 resembles a giant yellow sun, flagged with stars, labeled “Last day of January!” I framed the cover for my office, where the space heater’s still chugging.

Winds picked up again early on Sunday across Southern California, reaching close to 70 miles an hour near the western and eastern San Gabriel Mountains and the Highway 14 corridor. By the afternoon the winds are forecast to ease for a while, giving firefighters a reprieve to battle devastating wildfires. But that reprieve might not last long, forecasters say, as another round of strong, gusty Santa Ana winds develops on Monday and Tuesday, contributing to another stretch of dangerous and potentially extreme fire conditions. Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service, cautioned that while the winds this week may not be quite as strong as they were last week, their long duration could make the fire risk worse, especially in the western Los Angeles basin and Southern Californian mountains. With the humidity remaining low and the vegetation in the region very dry, an upgrade to “extreme” fire conditions, the highest risk classification, is “very well on the table,” Mr. Hurley said. Conditions were rated extreme last week, when wind gusts reached 100 m.p.h. For now, though, the fire risk is expected to be one level lower, at “critical,” in parts of Southern California from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon. The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles forecasts that the stronger Santa Ana winds will last from Monday night into Wednesday. Andrew Rorke, a meteorologist with the Weather Service, said the winds were expected to follow the typical Santa Ana direction, blowing northeast to southwest. The areas with the strongest winds will stretch from the mountains northeast of the Santa Clarita Valley, through the valleys along the Ventura and Los Angeles county line, and out across the western Santa Monica Mountains. They will be most powerful in the mountains, with gusts up to 60 m.p.h. Areas at lower elevations like San Clarita Valley and parts of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties will experience wind gusts between 35 m.p.h. and 55 m.p.h. “The only good news here is that the San Gabriel foothills and Eaton Fire area will not see any strong winds from this event,” Mr. Rorke said. Looking ahead, forecasters predict that the winds will continue into Thursday, but be weaker than on Wednesday, and may fall below the levels at which they would prompt a fire risk advisory. This will also lower temperatures in valleys and along the coast. By Friday, a dry weather system will move east, and the winds will shift to blowing onshore from the ocean, dropping temperatures a little further. One glimmer of hope, Mr. Hurley said, is a break from the extreme fire danger later in the week, when increased humidity is expected along with the lighter winds. “There’s a very small chance of rain next weekend, but that’s going out a bit, and it’s not a whole lot of rain in the forecast,” he said.

The devastating Los Angeles fires are thought to have taken 16 lives, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner's Office. Though officials have warned that the death toll may continue to rise in the coming days. The Palisades Fire—the largest of the multiple fires currently impacting Los Angeles County—remains rampant, engulfing more than 23,000 acres as of Sunday morning. The fire is only 11% contained so far. The Eaton Fire is at 14,000 acres, with 15% containment. Meanwhile, the Hurst Fire is at least 799 acres and 76% contained and the newer Kenneth Fire, which started on Thursday afternoon, is just over 1,000 acres and is now 90% contained. The earlier Sunset, Woodley, Tyler, Olivas, and Lidia fires have been fully contained. “This is a tragic time in our history,” said Los Angeles County Police Department Sheriff Jim McDonnell during a press briefing on Wednesday. “These are…unprecedented conditions, but also unpredictable as the fire continues to spread and pop up in different locations, none of us know where the next one is going to be.” The devastating nature of the fires is in part due to climate change, experts say, which has exacerbated the size, intensity, and damage caused by the wildfires in recent years. The southwestern U.S. is undergoing the driest 22-year period in the last 1,200 years. As temperatures have risen, so has the aridity, or dryness of the vegetation, which proved disastrous when coupled with the gusty Santa Ana winds. “The hot and dry Santa Ana winds that often affect the southern California region and fuel large wildfires such as the ongoing one, only make things worse,” said Imperial College London Professor Apostolos Voulgarakis in a statement. “Research has shown that the occurrence of Santa Ana winds in the autumn are also likely to get worse with climate change, leading to even drier vegetation, fast fire spread and more intense late-season wildfires.” The fire’s scope At least 150,000 residents have been forced to flee in the wake of the raging wildfires. The biggest threat to Los Angeles remains the strong winds. Despite broad efforts to take control of the fires, officials have expressed their distress about their magnitude. “We're facing a historic natural disaster,” said L.A. County Office of Emergency Management Director Kevin McGowan during Wednesday’s press conference. “This is not a normal red flag.” During the press conference, local leaders addressed concerns about fire hydrants that reportedly went dry in the county as firefighters sought to extinguish flames. Local media had reported on the incidents, though discussions about the topic also circulated on social media platforms including X. L.A. Department of Water and Power CEO Janisse Quiñones said that in Palisades, the three tanks of water that hold about a million gallons each and supply the region had run out. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency on Tuesday night, ordered an investigation into the fire water supply issue on Friday afternoon. Power outages have also been affecting much of Southern California. More than 63,000 California customers were still without power as of Sunday morning, according to Poweroutage.us. Climate impact A combination of factors compounded the impact and scope of the Los Angeles fires. The L.A. region has received little rain this year—a U.S. Drought Monitor Map, released last week, reported parts of Southern California as “abnormally dry”—coupled with warmer than usual temperatures. In addition, the area was battling a windstorm the day the fires were reported. “[The] National Weather Service reported wind gusts of close to 100 miles an hour in a region that had received close to zero precipitation with a season of very warm conditions,” says Stanford Professor Noah Diffenbaugh. “That is a very high-risk situation. And it was forecast in advance.” The fires are occurring outside of the state’s wildfire season, which typically runs from May through late October or November in the Southern California region, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association. Warmer temperatures and extended droughts could mean that wildfires might continue to occur outside of their usual season. “Because of the warming trend of climate change, the vegetation is a little bit drier and the fire season is a little bit later,” says Crystal Raymond, deputy director of the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative at the University of Washington. “You get more of the chance for this dry season to then overlap with the Santa Ana wind season.” It’s a phenomenon that could become more common due to climate change, says Raymond. “Generally throughout the West, we expect wildfires to become more frequent, larger, and happen in a longer fire season.” Raymond says that wildfires will continue to cause devastation as long as areas that were previously natural vegetation are commercially developed, a process known as wildland-urban interface. “There’s a lack of awareness about how much most people living in the West are living in areas that are prone to wildfire,” she says. Practices like controlled burns or vegetation management can help manage fire risks, and experts say that communities should have evacuation plans and plan any development with wildfires in mind. But wildfires have long been a part of California’s ecosystem, and will continue to be so. “There have been wildfires in California much longer than there have been cities,” says Diffenbaugh. “The key question for living with wildfire is how we as humans manage the risks.”

As fires continue to blaze across Los Angeles, more than 12,000 personnel have been deployed to support the ongoing firefight. Among those attempting to quell these fires are incarcerated persons working in a three-way partnership between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), CAL FIRE, and the Los Angeles County Fire Department LACFD. The current state of the fires is that at least 16 people are thought to have died, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner's Office. “Unfortunately I think the death toll will rise,” L.A. Sheriff Robert Luna said on Jan. 9. And the sheer volume of land destroyed is massive. As of Sunday morning—over 40,000 acres have been decimated. As of Friday morning, 939 incarcerated firefighters have been working “around the clock cutting fire lines and removing fuel behind structures to slow fire spread,” CDCR told TIME in an emailed statement. This includes 110 members of a support staff helping the firefighters. Here’s everything you need to know about how and why inmates are currently fighting the L.A. fires. Incarcerated firefighters have been working all week Incarcerated firefighters have been on the frontlines of the multiple fires breaking out in Los Angeles County and Southern California since earlier this week. On Wednesday, the CDCR told the Washington Post it had deployed 395 imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines. A day later, that number had nearly doubled to 783. The department said the crews also have 88 staff members supporting them. By Friday morning, almost 1,000 firefighters from the program were fighting the blazes. A look into the program making this happen—and what the firefighters can gain The incarcerated firefighters are a part of the Conservation (Fire) Camp Program—a partnership between CDCR, Cal Fire, and LACFD, which jointly operates 35 conservation camps across 25 counties in California. Participants in these camps “support state, local and federal government agencies as they respond to all types of emergencies such as fires, floods, and other natural or manmade disasters,” according to the CDCR website. Inmates must apply to be a part of the program and “no one is involuntarily assigned to work in a fire camp,” per the CDCR. “Thus, incarcerated people do not face disciplinary action if they choose not to serve their time in a fire camp.” Those who participate in the program can also receive “time credits,” according to the CDCR. Most of those who work as firefighters can receive two-for-one credits, “meaning they receive two additional days off their sentence for every one day they serve on a fire crew,” while those working as support staff receive one-for-one credits. The program started in 1915, though the modern protocol of training the inmates at camps began during World War II. Since their rates were doubled in 2023, the fire crew members now earn between $5.80 and $10.24 per day, paid by CDCR, with an additional $1 per hour during “emergencies” paid by CAL FIRE. This is the salary that the inmates currently fighting the California fires are receiving, in great contrast to their non incarcerated counterparts (salaries for the LACFD begin at around $85,000 according to their website). In recent years, the camp sizes have shrunk, thanks largely to a combination of prison reform efforts and overcrowding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pre-COVID, incarcerated firefighters made up around 30% of California's firefighting workforce; post-COVID, this is now closer to 10 to 15%, according to The Nature Conservancy. The dangers of the job Though the CDCR emphasizes that inmates working as firefighters have the opportunity to gain employment from their training with CAL FIRE, graduates of the program have reported difficulties accessing firefighting jobs once released despite their experience and training. Royal Ramey is a formerly-incarcerated individual who worked in the Conservation Fire Camp Program in 2012, and experienced first hand the struggle of finding work after his release in 2014. “The harsh reality is that once they get out [of prison], they face an uphill battle getting a job,” he tells TIME. Now, Ramey is the co-founder and chief program officer of his own nonprofit, the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, where he helps fellow formerly incarcerated individuals find paths to employment in forestry and wildland firefighting. The FFRP has a 10% rate of recidivism, compared to the California state average of 41.9%. It’s a difficult situation, Ramey says. On the one hand, he found his “calling” as a firefighter while in prison, and he “fell in love” with the work. “It really gave me the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be a little bit more confident, to understand how to communicate effectively with different folks, and also have a shared vision with a group of men,” Ramey says. On the other hand, he recognizes how little firefighters like him were getting paid in comparison to their counterparts, and when he first signed up, he says he “didn't really know what I was getting myself into.” A 2018 TIME report found that incarcerated firefighters were, at the time, four times more likely to experience object-induced injuries, such as cuts, bruises, dislocations and fractures, compared with professional firefighters working on the same fires. Inmates were also more than eight times as likely to be injured after inhaling smoke and particulates compared with other firefighters. For Ramey, the work is making sure that incarcerated firefighters are not just utilized in times of extreme need, but that they have pathways to employment after their release and mentorship along the way as well.