By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun

     SAN DIEGO COUNTY — Lightning strikes in various areas in the East County and Back Country were the cause of numerous brush fires over the weekend. According to California Forestry Department officials, there were 1,600 lightning strikes around the county between 5 p.m. Friday evening and 5 a.m. Saturday morning.
     Fire officials blamed a bolt of lightning for igniting a 107-acre grass fire off the end of Proctor Valley Road just south of Indian Springs. The blaze was reported at 4:27 a.m. Saturday morning and took several hours to contain. 
     “Access was a problem,” said CDF official Roxanne Provaznik. “Bulldozers tried to make access, and fire crews hiked into the site.”
     Firefighters were helped by moisture produced from a fog that rolled in after dawn, Provaznik said. Ground crews worked through the morning with the aide of helicopters and air tankers. No one was injured and no structures were threatened in the blaze.
     Shortly before 3 p.m., another fire started by lightning broke out near Church Road and State Route 94 in Campo, and burned about nine acres in an hour, before being stopped. The rate of spread was slow and scattered rain helped firefighting efforts according to CDF officials.
     The lightning storms were the result of the heat wave last week, which produced triple-digit temperatures in certain areas around the county. On Friday, Escondido equaled its previous high of 96 degrees set in 1982 while El Cajon set a new record of 101.
     Several rainfall records were shattered as well due to the weather and forecasters declared a flash flood watch for desert and mountain areas of the county on Monday amid indications that more storms were on the way. The watch remained in effect until 8 p.m. The only spot of actual flooding reported in the county was near Julian at Palomar Mountain.
     A rainfall record was set for July 24 at Palomar Mountain, which recorded .65 inches of rain, breaking records of .35 inches set in 1988. A record was also set in Campo, which received .32 inches of rain, compared to the previous record of .24 inches, set in 1974. According to the National Weather Service the storm dumped 2.3 inches of rain on Mount Laguna in just under 40 minutes.
     Fire officials were expecting a second round of storms early this week, however they did not materialize as intensely as expected. Good news for the area that is already very dry due to the extreme heat and overrun with kindling from the rains in the past few months.
     “We have thousands of trees and plants that are dead and are never coming back,” Streck said. “They are bone dry.” He said fire officials have been working to remove dead brush as quickly as possible to remove fuel for the fires.
     According to Streck, CDF officials were particularly concerned about holdover areas, where a lightning strike causes a tree to smolder for a while before bursting into flames. Fire pilots swept the Back Country looking for any of these ignitions or other lightning strike fires.
     “They’re going to be flying around the area keeping their eyes out for any of these hot spots,” Streck said.
     According to the National Weather Service, these storms shouldn’t be much of a surprise for Southern California residents.
     “It’s monsoon season,” said Noel Isla, forecaster with NWS. “The storms come every year to the mountains communities and desert areas.”
     “The storms are brief but powerful,” Isla said.
     Typically during a monsoon, thunderstorms develop usually in the early afternoon over the higher mountains. Rain-cooled air from these thunderstorms, known as outflow, moves down from the high country and into the deserts.
     Acting like a small-scale cold front, the outflow forces hot and humid desert air to rise, producing more thunderstorms, said NWS officials.

                                                            E-mail Christy Scott