Rain and cooler temperatures will bring relief to Southern California this weekend, after a prolonged stretch of dry, breezy weather that allowed wildfires to thrive. The parched landscape between Los Angeles and San Diego hasn’t seen any significant precipitation so far this winter, providing plenty of dry vegetation to fuel the fires. A cold storm system forecast to move across the region Saturday through Monday will change that. But there’s a growing chance that the rain could be on the heavier side — up to three quarters of an inch per hour, said Ryan Kittell, a National Weather Service meteorologist. That could trigger flash floods and debris flows in places recently charred by the Palisades and Hughes fires and especially in the region burned by the Eaton fire, which is expected to see more rain than the other areas. The Santa Ana winds that have swept over the region for weeks finally stopped blowing late Friday morning and a coastal breeze developed, pushing moist cool air off the ocean. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Light showers could fall as early as Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, where fires are still burning. The greatest chance for heavier rainfall will come between 4 p.m. Sunday and noon Monday. Parts of Los Angeles, including downtown, could receive as much as an inch of rain, said Brian Lewis, a Weather Service forecaster in Oxnard, Calif. “We’re not expecting high rainfall rates unless a thunderstorm goes right over that area,” he said. There’s now a 15 to 25 percent chance of isolated thunderstorms. There’s also a chance for snow at elevations as low as 3,500 feet. The lower parts of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains could receive up to four inches of snow. Elevations above 5,000 feet could see six to 12 inches, with as much as two feet on the highest peaks. Though the risk for debris flows — or mudslides — is relatively low, officials were deploying crews across the region this week to clear debris and deploy sandbags. At a news conference, Mark Pestrella, Los Angeles County’s public works director, said that people living on or near scorched hillsides should be cautious, especially if their homes had not been inspected after the fires. “Your best bet is not to be in that home when it rains,” he said. Mudslides or debris flows — which Jason Kean, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, described as “a flood on steroids” — happen when burned soil becomes compact like concrete, funneling water down slopes that have lost any vegetation to keep it in check. That rushing water can claw up the landscape, unleashing a torrent of trees, rocks, brush and anything else in the way. Residents can use burn maps created by the U.S.G.S. to determine if their home is at risk. The Eaton fire near Pasadena could be the most prone to debris flows. Peak rainfall — defined as more than 1.5 inches per hour, falling within a 15-minute interval — would be nearly certain to trigger a debris flow, the maps show. The San Diego area will see the effects of the storm about 12 hours after Los Angeles, as the chance for rain, and chillier air, moves south on Sunday and Monday. While the projected precipitation totals for the region went up slightly on Friday than earlier predictions, Rich Bann, a meteorologist with the Weather Service, said this storm wouldn’t deliver a major deluge. “In most areas at most times, this amount of rain generally isn’t a concern and it’s only a concern right now because we have these fresh burn scars,” he said.

Parts of the South were at a standstill on Wednesday after a rare winter storm dumped record amounts of snow on much of the Gulf Coast and the Carolinas. In its aftermath, major cities and beachfront communities from East Texas to the Outer Banks were facing days of rare, freezing temperatures. The storm, fueled by a whirling mass of Arctic air, killed at least 10 people in Texas, Alabama and Georgia, and left ice-covered roads and frozen bridges in its wake. North Carolina opened warming centers and deployed more than 1,300 vehicles to treat roads and remove ice, and many schools and businesses were closed, some for days.The snow canceled classes and made getting to work impossible, disrupting routines and causing an array of problems in New Orleans, where most people have little or no experience navigating wintry conditions. But amid the complications on Wednesday, the winter storm made the landscape a dazzling spectacle. Snow coated roofs and parked cars; icicles dangled from porches. Some made sleds out of whatever they could find — trash bin lids, baking sheets, cardboard boxes. There were snowball fights and a group of teenagers wielded icicles like swords.Amid an extraordinary storm that delivered a blast of winter to Southern states, Florida appeared to have shattered its state record for the most snow over 24 hours. Milton, a town in the western panhandle, picked up 8.75 to 10 inches of snow from Tuesday morning to Wednesday morning, more than doubling the previous 24-hour state record of four inches set on March 6, 1954, also in Milton, according to the National Weather Service.

Residents of Northern cities might laugh at the puny snowfall accumulations shutting down streets, bridges and interstates across the South — maybe for days, officials warn. But there’s a simple reason that two to six inches of snow can be crippling along the Gulf Coast: Most of its cities have no snowplows. “It so rarely snows here,” said Erin Jones, a spokeswoman for the public works department in Houston, which hasn’t had this much snow since at least 1960. “They would basically sit in storage for year after year after year.” The state was sending 30 plows to Houston to help clear streets. But even that fleet pales to a city like Chicago, which has 300 trucks that can plow streets and spread salt, and another 200 garbage trucks that can also be equipped with plows when needed. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the state’s infrastructure was designed differently than that in states used to snowfall, adding that “we’re not necessarily used to walking in a winter wonderland here.” The limited snow infrastructure across the Southern states could spell problems for local communities trying to dig out from a historic storm that could bring up to 10 inches of snow to parts of the Gulf Coast. Now, cities are being forced to find creative solutions or rely on their lack of or limited supply of plows to help battle the snow accumulation. Other locations have received help from nearby states. On Monday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Arkansas had sent his state 12 dump trucks with snowplows, CNN reported. And the city of Pensacola, Fla., which does not own any snowplows, is relying on four from Atlanta, according to a city spokesman. But the state of Florida itself has done a lot to prepare, according to Governor DeSantis, who said on Tuesday that the Florida Department of Transportation was ready to deploy 11 snowplows.Kevin Guthrie, Florida’s emergency management director, said at a news conference that the state had built capacity after past winter storms and cold spells. But, he added, “Do I think we’re ever going to get a situation in Florida where we have hundreds of snow plows and all kinds of de-icing equipment? No.”

When will it end? A blast of Arctic air continued to batter much of the United States on Tuesday, testing the South and even the hardiest of Northeasterners. A rare winter storm made its way across the Gulf Coast on Tuesday, prompting blizzard warnings for the first time in parts of Texas and Louisiana. Snow could last for days from Houston to Tallahassee, Fla., because of a major piece of equipment is largely missing in the region: snow plows. The brutal cold — with temperatures plunging far below normal for January and bringing potentially dangerous conditions when combined with wind — will continue to plague much of the country over the next week. The bleak forecast forced many indoors. For others, the dogs still had to be walked. Here are scenes from across a country bracing itself against the cold.

A significant winter storm settled into portions of the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast on Sunday ahead of dangerously low temperatures that will envelop much of the country in some of the coldest weather in years, National Weather Service forecasters said. The heaviest snowfall was expected north and west of the Interstate 95 corridor, with up to eight inches possible, according to the Weather Service. Parts of West Virginia reported getting up to seven inches of snow by Sunday afternoon, according to the Weather Service. Lighter accumulations were reported from Kentucky to Massachusetts by Sunday evening. In Philadelphia, football players for the Philadelphia Eagles made snow angels on the field before defeating the Los Angeles Rams. “Heavy snow bands” began to move across New York City and western Long Island Sunday evening, the Weather Service said. Forecasters at the New York office of the Weather Service said heavy snow was falling across parts of the Lower Hudson Valley and Northern New Jersey and warned that some areas could receive one to two inches per hour at times. Early reports estimated that three to five inches had accumulated in the Lower Hudson Valley and Northern New Jersey by Sunday night, the service said. The office also said on Sunday that it had received reports of the phenomenon known as “thundersnow” — when lightning and thunder occur during a snowstorm. Much of the Northeast is under winter storm warnings or winter weather advisories. A winter storm warning is issued when severe winter weather is expected or already occurring, and could make travel extremely dangerous or even impossible. An advisory is for less severe conditions. The New York City metropolitan area, Long Island, southern Westchester and coastal Connecticut are under winter weather advisories. Snowfall accumulations of three to five inches were expected, which may lead to slippery travel and snow-covered roads. Airports across the Northeast were experiencing delays and cancellations throughout Sunday afternoon and evening. Major airports around New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C., were clearing snow and ice from their runways throughout the day, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. After a light snowfall stopped on Sunday night in Washington, D.C., the district warned residents of falling temperatures that could turn the snow on their cars to ice by the morning. As the storm reached Massachusetts, the state reduced the speed limit for a portion of I-90 from the border with New York to Interchange 41. Immediately after the storm clears out early on Monday, arctic air will plunge across most of the south-central and southeastern parts of the United States, bringing several days of frigid conditions. The high temperatures will be from below zero to single digits in the Northern Plains and the Upper Midwest; single digits and teens across the Rockies, the central Plains and the Midwest; the teens and 20s across the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic; and between the 20s and 30s in Texas and the Southeast. The Weather Service said wind chills would be at dangerously low levels and hypothermia or frostbite could occur with prolonged exposure or lack of proper clothing. Wind chills from 30 to 55 degrees below zero are expected at times on Monday in the Rockies, the northern Plains and the Upper Midwest, and subzero as far south as Oklahoma and the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys. In Chicago on Sunday, temperatures were in the single digits at 11 a.m. Ann Marie Saviano, 51, who lives in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood on the city’s South Side, said she had plans to meet friends for brunch, go grocery shopping and attend a birthday party.“It’s that time of year we call hibernation season — when people retreat into their dens to stay warm and cozy for one to four days, and emerge ready to face the world when it’s a balmy 23 degrees,” Ms. Saviano said.Forecasters warned of a significant winter storm across the Gulf Coast states coming Monday, as a combination of frigid air and a storm system over the Gulf is expected to bring snow, freezing rain and ice to the region that could lead to major travel disruptions. As the storm moves eastward from Texas, it is forecast to sweep across Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and the Carolinas. The National Weather Service has issued winter storm watches for portions of Louisiana. The most snowfall is likely to be between the U.S. 190 and Interstate 10 corridors of Louisiana and southeast Texas, where four to six inches may accumulate.

Strong, damaging Santa Ana winds are expected to bring extreme wildfire danger to Southern California Monday into Tuesday as the landscape remains dangerously starved of rain, and as firefighters continue to work to fully contain wildfires that left at least 27 people dead and destroyed thousands of homes this month. While an offshore wind pattern is expected across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties Monday through Friday, the winds are predicted to pose the highest danger Monday evening into Tuesday morning. There is a chance the winds could be similar in strength to the fierce gusts that topped 90 miles per hour and fueled the devastating wildfires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. The big difference with these winds, though, is that they are expected to affect different locations, as they will blow with a more northeast-to-east tilt than the Jan. 7 event, which had a north-to-northeast tilt, said Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, Calif.The areas likely to see the strongest gusts include the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, the mountains and foothills of Los Angeles County and much of Ventura County. Amid the windy conditions, downed trees, power outages and dangerous ocean conditions are also likely. The persistent offshore pattern will suck any remaining moisture out of the vegetation, which is already dangerously dry because rain in southwestern California has been “historically scarce,” the Weather Service said. Relative humidity levels are poised to plummet, especially on Tuesday, and will reach the single digits in some cases. The winds, along with dry fuels and bone-dry air, “would yield locally rapid fire growth with any new fires,” Ms. Schoenfeld said. Southern California is primed to burn. Big storms soaked the landscape during the previous two winters, allowing vegetation to thrive. But since the spring, the region has had scant rainfall, and grasses and brush are withered and flammable.The weather gauge in downtown Los Angeles, a good indicator of rainfall for the county, has only recorded 0.29 inches of rain since May 1. This would put it on track to be the lowest amount of rain ever measured between May and January, with records going back to 1877. At least two inches of rain is needed to significantly lower fire risk, according to Brian Newman, who analyzes wildfire behavior for Cal Fire. Of the upcoming weather conditions, he said, “Hopefully we get no new ignitions, no new fire starts — at all.” Santa Anas are those desiccating winds that occur commonly in winter, blowing out of Nevada and Utah and into southwestern California. Carrying dry desert air, they push over the mountains in the Transverse Ranges and accelerate as they move downslope, howling into the canyons and valleys. The winds are expected to affect most of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. At their peak, isolated gusts of 50 m.p.h. to 70 m.p.h. are expected along the coast and in valleys, while gusts up to of 80 m.p.h. to 100 m.p.h. are possible in the foothills and the mountains. On Tuesday, warm weather with afternoon temperatures in the high 60s to low 70s, as well as low relative humidity levels in the teens and single digits, will add to the high fire risk. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Winds are expected to continue Wednesday and Thursday before relaxing on Friday. The Weather Service alerts the community of dire fire conditions through red-flag warnings, and the agency has issued one from 10 a.m. Monday to 10 p.m. Tuesday for portions of Los Angeles County and much of Ventura County. A less extreme fire weather watch was issued from Tuesday evening through Thursday evening. In the extreme wind event earlier this month, the Weather Service heightened the severity level of the warning with the designation of a “particularly dangerous situation” because isolated gusts of up to 100 m.p.h. were forecast to occur. The agency may issue another one, potentially for Monday into Tuesday. Los Angeles has not seen any rain in January, but there is finally a chance for some at the end of the month — though it looks like it may be on the lighter side. “That’s honestly bad news for our fire weather season here going forward,” Ms. Schoenfeld said.

Dikeledi was a tropical cyclone in the Indian Ocean late Friday Eastern Africa Time, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said in its latest advisory. The tropical cyclone had sustained wind speeds of 52 miles per hour. Where will it rain? Flash flooding can occur well inland and away from the storm’s center. Even weaker storms can produce excessive rainfall that can flood low-lying areas.Only about a quarter of the Earth’s tropical cyclones form in the Southern Hemisphere. When these storms have sustained winds of 74 m.p.h. or greater, they would be called hurricanes in the Atlantic, but here, they are called cyclones. The only other difference is that, in the Southern Hemisphere, cyclones spin clockwise (hurricanes spin counterclockwise). Cyclones can strike eastern Africa, primarily Madagascar, as well as the western, northern and eastern coasts of Australia and surrounding island nations. The season here runs opposite the rest of the world, typically beginning in late October and running through May. Peaks in activity vary depending on the region, but normally, activity is highest in late February and early March.

It was 48 degrees at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, when Donald J. Trump was first sworn in as president at the Capitol. This time around, with a forecast high of only 23 degrees, he would have been taking the oath during one of the coldest inaugurations in decades. Facing such frigid conditions, he announced on Friday the ceremony would be moved indoors. The last time a presidential inauguration was held indoors, it was for Ronald Reagan’s second on Jan. 21, 1985. The parade that day was also canceled because of the bitter cold. (“This shivering city reacted with relief tonight to the announcement that the inaugural parade had been canceled,” The New York Times declared at the time.) According to records from the National Weather Service, the temperature at noon that day was only 7 degrees, the morning low was 4 degrees below zero, and the daytime high was only 17. Wind chill temperatures that afternoon were 10 to 20 degrees below zero. The conditions anticipated for this year, as arctic air moves across much of the United States in the next few days, are not quite so brutal. Nevertheless, temperatures in Washington will begin to plummet on Sunday, and wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour are expected to sweep through the National Mall on Monday. There is a moderate likelihood of some snow in the city on Sunday. And with temperatures already below freezing, the wind will make the open space in front of the Capitol feel much colder, said Jeremy Geiger, a forecaster at the Weather Service office in Sterling, Va. The wind chill is forecast to reach 5 degrees in the city early Monday morning. It was a sunny but bitterly cold 28 degrees when Barack Obama was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2009, one of the coldest inaugurations of the modern era. Until the 1930s, most presidential inaugurations were held on March 4, but even that late-winter day could be bitterly cold. It was 16 degrees and windy in 1873 when President Ulysses S. Grant was sworn in for his second term. Sometimes the cold weather’s place in inaugural history isn’t the result of a record temperature. The 1841 swearing-in of William Henry Harrison was held on March 4, with an overcast sky, blustery winds and an estimated noon temperature of 48 degrees.His speech, the longest in presidential history, lasted an hour and 40 minutes, and he delivered it without a hat or an overcoat. He was dead a month later, of what has long been thought to have been a case of pneumonia that he developed that day. (In 2014, researchers advanced a theory that Harrison’s death was not solely the result of the weather on his inauguration, but instead may have been caused by typhoid fever he contracted because of Washington’s unclean water supply at the time.)

Fires are still raging across Los Angeles in what is shaping up to be one of the most expensive calamities on American soil, with estimates of the economic damage and losses running as high as $275 billion. Thousands of residents have lost their homes, which are often their most valuable asset. Yet there are few signs that policymakers and regulators are grappling with the decisions that brought so many people into high- risk areas to begin with. Their refusal to do so sets the stage for an even bigger, potentially deadlier and more expensive disaster down the line. Financial markets, if left to their own devices, would naturally force Americans to confront the ugly realities of our changing climate and deter them from flocking to places where human habitation is increasingly untenable. Unfortunately, this basic system of supply and demand has been stymied by regional and federal policies — policies supported by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in both blue and red states who buckle under the short-term political pressure to keep home insurance premiums artificially low. The result is highly unfair and distorts the market. It endangers our economy by sending scarce resources into the path of natural disasters and will likely devastate still more lives. In theory, insurance prices quantify the risks of living in a certain place. Of course it should be more expensive to insure a home in an area buffeted by disaster. But in practice, states vary widely in their willingness to allow insurance premiums to increase, with some making it far harder than others for insurers to raise prices. California is one of the most resistant, and until recently refused to let insurers raise premiums or reflect climate-catastrophe risks in their pricing.Insurers doing business in such heavily regulated states, finding themselves unable to raise premiums when needed, wind up shifting some of the costs to homeowners who happen to live in states that are more accommodating to premium increases. That is, in part, how middle-class communities, such as Enid, Okla., can end up subsidizing the owners of million-dollar houses in Malibu. And under our current regulatory regime, that dynamic is only expected to strengthen as climate losses continue to cut into insurance companies’ bottom line. The voices loudly criticizing California for its rigid control of insurance pricing are ignoring numerous similar examples from the rest of the country. In 2023, after the federal flood insurance program began to adjust its premiums to better reflect climate realities, 10 states across the political spectrum — including reliably red Louisiana, Florida and Texas and moderate blue Virginia — sued the program. And California isn’t the only state that failed to raise premiums to properly fund its FAIR plan, the state-sponsored insurer of last resort often relied on by those living in climate-vulnerable areas; Florida did as well. Home insurance is just one way our financial system encourages Americans to move to flood-prone sections of Florida or parched, air-conditioning-dependent Arizona. The government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee about 70 percent of mortgages on single-family homes, charge the same fees regardless of climate risk. Nobody intends to move into harm’s way. Many people settle in places like Texas because housing is generally more affordable. But that affordability is a mirage: Their mortgage and insurance risks are being subsidized by everyone else. This system, and the continual building in risky areas, portends ever-rising disaster losses. We get why change is hard. Losing one’s home can be economically and emotionally devastating. Rising insurance premiums can stress homeowners who are already struggling. For households that have their entire life savings tied to their homes, hefty premiums combined with lower home values tied to the cost of insurance could even lead them to default on their mortgages. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Your Hearing Can Get Worse as You Age. Here’s How to Protect It. Kristen Stewart Thinks the Critics at Cannes Are Being Too Nice That may explain why a growing number of households living in imperiled areas are not only taking on more debt to pay for higher premiums but also reducing their coverage altogether, leaving them dangerously exposed to disasters. Regulators can and should monitor insurers so they don’t use their market power to charge excessive rates. But we are at the other extreme in many high-risk areas: At some point, regulators will have to allow prices to go up so insurers remain solvent and private insurance stays available, even in places hard hit by climate change. The longer they delay, the larger and more disruptive the price increases will be. Premiums in Florida nearly doubled from 2018 to 2023. And by the time premiums catch up to risks, more households will have moved to dangerous areas, lured by artificially low prices that mask the true cost, and sunk their life savings into their homes. It is pain now versus even more pain later. But eventually, once prices reflect risks, incentives will rebalance, and people will be discouraged from migrating to and building in disaster-prone areas. For state and federal policymakers, the question they must face is not whether we should move to insurance pricing that reflects risks, but how. The federal flood insurance program can point to an approach. From 2021 to 2023, the program phased in risk-based pricing. Policies for new customers were adjusted first. Existing customers in high-risk areas have a much longer adjustment period. This gives households information and time to adjust to the new pricing regime. If climate change creates more frequent, intense and correlated disasters, insurers may continue to leave high-risk areas, even with risk-based pricing. If so, the government could step in by creating, say, a federal reinsurance backstop. If policymakers choose to go in this direction, it is paramount for this coverage to be priced correctly. Otherwise, we risk adding yet another implicit subsidy for disaster-prone areas. We don’t have to live this way. Our policies were designed for a world where the gap between high- and low-risk areas was smaller and less persistent. But these gaps have been growing rapidly. And the longer we wait, the more we, and our society, will suffer.

The sky was clear over Los Angeles on Tuesday, a welcome respite after acrid smoke from wildfires choked the region last week. In Santa Monica’s waterfront Palisades Park, the air was fresh enough for people to jog. Air quality, measured on a scale from good to hazardous, was good to moderate on Monday and mostly good across Los Angeles County on Tuesday, according to data from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. A smoke advisory issued by the agency expired at 10 p.m. Sunday. Similar conditions are expected Wednesday, as long as wildfires do not flare up again and no new blazes break out. Los Angeles residents might be breathing easier when they step outside, but Dr. Scott Epstein, the air quality assessment manager for the Air Quality Management District, warned that conditions can suddenly change and that windblown dust and ash continue to be concerns. The lightest of winds can pick up the ash from burned areas and carry it across the county. “We know that this ash has a lot of toxic, carcinogenic material in it,” Dr. Epstein said. “The instruments that typically measure air quality don’t measure ash. However, it tends to be big enough to be able to see with the naked eye.” A Los Angeles County Public Health Department advisory about windblown ash and dust is in effect through 7 p.m. Wednesday. The National Weather Service expects winds to pick up again, with the strongest gusts likely Wednesday morning and afternoon in Ventura and northern Los Angeles Counties. An N95 or P100 mask can help provide protection from the ash, according to health officials. The Palisades and Eaton fires, the biggest in the region, were no longer pumping out massive amounts of smoke on Tuesday. The strong winds that were forecast to develop Monday night into Tuesday morning and further spread the two fires never arrived. That enabled firefighters to put out actively burning sections and keep addressing the remaining hot spots, an effort that will continue for days. “We have smoldering hot material within the burn perimeter, but there’s no active fire that’s producing smoke,” said Brian Newman, who analyzes blazes for Cal Fire. “We’re in a slow, creeping, minimal-active burning phase.” Dr. Epstein said that if people step outside and smell smoke, it is best to go back inside and close their windows, and wear a mask when outdoors. They can also monitor air quality conditions on the South Coast Air Quality Management District website.