The blazes have destroyed swathes of forest, and firefighters say they do not yet have them under control. More than 10,000 homes are threatened by the fires, which have been sparked by record temperatures.

Two firefighters have died in California as they battled intense wildfires to the north of Los Angeles.

The fires, fuelled by record temperatures, are now threatening over 12,000 buildings, officials say.

Residents of 10,000 homes have been told to evacuate. State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger described the blazes as “still totally out of control”.

The fires also threaten communication towers housing transmitters for all Los Angeles’ major TV stations.

Mount Wilson near the city of Pasadena, where the towers are located, is also home to a historic solar observatory.

Firefighters were withdrawn from the mountain after clearing brush and spraying fire retardant because conditions were too dangerous, officials said. The fires were expected to reach the area overnight.

About 2,000 firefighters are trying to contain the fires, which have burnt over 66 sq miles (170 sq km) of forest.

‘Did not listen’

County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bryant said the two firefighters died when their vehicle rolled off a hillside near Mount Gleason in the Angeles National Forest on Sunday.

On Sunday, the wildfires rained ash on cars and homes as far away as central Los Angeles.

Planes have been dropping fire retardent in an effort to prevent the spread of the fires.

The fires were burning out of control in all directions, state officials said, but emergency crews were concentrating their efforts on the fast-moving northern edge of the inferno.

Mr Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency last week, urged people to obey evacuation orders, after three people were badly burned.

“There were people that did not listen and there were three people that got burned and got critically injured because they did not listen,” he said.

Two of those injured had been trying to shelter from the fires in a backyard hot tub.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the pair, in Big Tujunga Canyon, “completely underestimated the fire” and the hot tub provided “no protection whatsoever”.

‘Perfect storm’

Officials say the blaze is only 5% contained, with the area’s steep, rugged hills making efforts to fight it more difficult.

A wide area of California has been affected.

Mandatory evacuation orders covering about 10,000 homes and 2,500 other buildings are in place.

Parts of Altadena, Glendale, Pasadena, La Crescenta are also affected.

Evacuation centres have been set up at local schools.

With forecasts of continuing hot weather, there has been speculation that it could take firefighters a week to bring the blaze under control, says the BBC’s David Willis in Los Angeles.

Wildfires are a feature of the Californian summer, but it is unusual for them to break so close to major population centres.

A number of other fires are also burning in southern and central California.

A new fire in Placer County, northeast of the state capital Sacramento, destroyed 60 structures, many of them homes, the Associated Press reported.

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24hr Graph for 30th August 2009

Average temperature = 15.8°C
Average humidity = 83%
Average dewpoint = 12.9°C
Average barometer = 1016.3 mb
Average windspeed = 4.7 mph
Average gustspeed = 9.1 mph
Average direction = 192° (SSW)
Rainfall for month = 0.0 mm
Rainfall for year = 692.4 mm
Rainfall for day = 0.0 mm
Maximum rain per minute = 0.0 mm on day 30 at time 23:50
Maximum temperature = 19.3°C on day 30 at time 16:06
Minimum temperature = 12.0°C on day 30 at time 06:41
Maximum humidity = 89% on day 30 at time 23:50
Minimum humidity = 76% on day 30 at time 00:34
Maximum pressure = 1020.4 mb on day 30 at time 00:10
Minimum pressure = 1013.0 mb on day 30 at time 23:49
Maximum windspeed = 10.4 mph on day 30 at time 20:53
Maximum gust speed = 20 mph from 180 °( S ) on day 30 at time 14:36
Maximum heat index = 21.1°C on day 30 at time 16:32

The observant reader may well have noticed there was no Daily Stats update yesterday, well, that’s because there wern’t any recorded in the archive Why?…human error!

The computers that run wsmweather (there are 2 of them) have to run 24/7 to capture the data from the weather station, archive it and to publish it automatically onto the internet. To ensure that things run smoothly the computers both have RAID hard drive arrays (i.e. backups) and are powered from a Uninterpretable Power Supply. However, despite that, wsmweather’s computers suffered a rather abrupt power fail – and it was my fault! This resulted in data corruption. The culprit was a faulty PSU on a clock that I plugged in, in the office. The socket I used was the UPS socket which feeds both of the computers that run this website. It seemed a reasonable thing, not to want the clock to reset every time there is a power cut, but I never imagined the clock’s PSU would fail and wipe out the incoming supply with it

So, there you have it. Best laid plans, lots of money spent and things can STILL go wrong!

Fortunately, there IS still an archive of sorts!

I share my data every 5 minutes with WUNDERGROUND and PWSWEATHER so the daily weather is always available on those sites too.

Here is the data for the 28th August 2009 on WUNDERGROUND.

Here is the data for the 28th August 2009 on the PWSWEATHER site.

Lesson learned – don’t plug things in on the UPS, leave it for the critical devices that run the web sites!

24hr Graph for 29th August 2009

Average temperature = 15.5°C
Average humidity = 71%
Average dewpoint = 10.0°C
Average barometer = 1020.7 mb
Average windspeed = 5.6 mph
Average gustspeed = 11.7 mph
Average direction = 279° ( W )
Rainfall for month = 0.0 mm
Rainfall for year = 692.4 mm
Rainfall for day = 0.0 mm
Maximum rain per minute = 0.0 mm on day 29 at time 23:50
Maximum temperature = 19.8°C on day 29 at time 15:54
Minimum temperature = 12.2°C on day 29 at time 06:17
Maximum humidity = 82% on day 29 at time 07:48
Minimum humidity = 55% on day 29 at time 15:29
Maximum pressure = 1022.3 mb on day 29 at time 10:59
Minimum pressure = 1018.6 mb on day 29 at time 00:35
Maximum windspeed = 12.7 mph on day 29 at time 14:31
Maximum gust speed = 25 mph from 225 °( SW) on day 29 at time 17:32
Maximum heat index = 25.4°C on day 29 at time 14:16

Viewed from the Banana River Viewing Site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Discovery arcs through a cloud-brushed sky, lighted by the trail of fire after launch on the STS-128 mission. Liftoff from Launch Pad 39A was on time at 11:59 p.m. EDT. The first launch attempt on Aug. 24 was postponed due to unfavorable weather conditions. The second attempt on Aug. 25 also was postponed due to an issue with a valve in space shuttle Discovery's main propulsion system. The STS-128 mission is the 30th International Space Station assembly flight and the 128th space shuttle flight. The 13-day mission will deliver more than 7 tons of supplies, science racks and equipment, as well as additional environmental hardware to sustain six crew members on the International Space Station. The equipment includes a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment and the COLBERT treadmill.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1457.html

The National Trust had closed the gardens but the house remained open

The National Trust had closed the formal gardens at Stourhead because of fears that strong winds could bring down trees within the grounds.

The Met office had forecast gusting winds in excess of 40 miles per hour throughout Friday.

“We’ve already lost limbs on a couple of trees this summer”, said Emily Utgren, arborist at Stourhead.

The National Trust is monitoring conditions and will re-open the gardens when the site is deemed safe.

Signs warning of potential, short-notice or partial estate closures are being put up at other National Trust sites in the area.

The house and restaurant, along with other indoor facilities, at Stourhead remain open.

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