Southern California is facing a rare and dangerous juxtaposition of extreme winds and mid-winter drought on Tuesday and Wednesday, a worrying example of the states expanding wildfire threat as climate change worsens.At least 10 new fires had started across Los Angeles County as of Tuesday afternoon, even before the strongest winds were expected to arrive.The Palisades firethe largest of them, with ominously billowing towers of smoke visible across most of Los Angelesbegan as a brush fire in the Hollywood Hills on Tuesday morning and quickly grew to more than 700 acres, prompting mandatory evacuationsincluding of celebrities.The City of Los Angeles warned of a destructive, widespread, and potentially life-threatening windstorm and the National Weather Service called the combination of strong winds and dry conditions a particularly dangerous situation. One California-based meteorologist said on social media that it was the most scared hes ever been putting a forecast together.This weeks windstorm has the potential to be particularly widespread and long-lasting. The notorious Santa Ana winds could get as high as 100 mph early Wednesday in parts of the foothills surrounding Los Angeles. That would make it the strongest and potentially most destructive Southern California wind storm since November 2011. In a worst-case scenario, dozens of wildfires could pop up simultaneously and rapidly grow out of controlovertaking neighborhoods and cutting off evacuation routes much more quickly than firefighters can react to slow them down.People are running from their cars. Omg. Standstill traffic out. Fire is all around us. pic.twitter.com/OsBmBOKlmp Kelsey Trainor (@ktrain_11) January 7, 2025 The National Weather Service defines extremely critical fire weather as sustained winds in excess of 30 mph and relative humidity of less than 10% in the presence of drought conditions and temperatures warmer than 70 degrees. This is the first time in history these criteria have been met anywhere in the United States during the month of January.In preparation, Southern California Edison told more than 400,000 householdsabout 15% of homes and businesses across the regionto prepare for pre-emptive power outages. Cal Fire moved equipment from Northern California to Southern California on Monday in advance.The planned electricity outages are a tool of last resort to prevent the grid from sparking wildfires due to downed power lines. Utilities have increasingly used them to limit their own liability. PG&E, the states largest utility, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after accruing hundreds of millions of dollars of civil settlements and criminal penalties from catastrophic wildfires sparked by their equipment.Santa Ana winds form when cold, dense desert air is channeled through narrow canyons and down the mountains towards the coast. Recent studies have found that Santa Ana wind events could get less frequent, but perhaps more intense in the winter months due to climate change.The downsloping winds will act as a blow dryer for already parched vegetation, helping small embers quickly grow to towering flames and mature wildfires leapfrog over containment lines.While some parts of Northern California have seen twice the typical amount of rain and snowfall this winter, there has been essentially no precipitation for the past nine months in the southern part of the state. As a result, severe and even extreme drought have reemerged in California in recent weeks.Santa Ana winds are most common during the winter months, but its exceedingly unusual for them to occur at the same time as a pre-existing droughtthe winter months typically mark the peak of the rainy season across the West Coast. As winters warm and California dries out, extreme Santa Ana windstorms will overlap with drought conditions more frequently. A majority of the largest, deadliest, and most destructive wildfires in state history have all occurred within the past 10 years. The emergence of extreme wintertime wildfires in California are one of those classic this is climate change moments: A specific set of weather conditions are now occurring in such a way to produce the potential for rare disasters to become much more common.

Oregon homeowners who live in certain high-risk wildfire areas defined by the state must now meet new building codes and reduce vegetation around their homes under new wildfire hazard maps unveiled Tuesday.The release of the maps follows a record-breaking wildfire season last year and firestorms in 2020 that killed nine people and destroyed thousands of homes.The state-developed maps which will not affect homeowners insurance rates, under Oregon law create new rules for those living in the most fire-prone areas that also border wildlands such as forests or grasslands. The provisions impact 6% of the states roughly 1.9 million tax lots, a reduction from an earlier version developed in 2022 but retracted after homeowners raised concerns that it would increase insurance premiums.Wildfire seasons are growing longer and more intense due to climate change, and Oregon isnt the only state grappling with how to manage the risk. Washington state and Colorado have also recently moved to address fire risk in their communities, and a new rule announced in California last week will require insurance companies to provide policies in high-risk wildfire areas in order to continue doing business in the state.In Oregon, the new building and so-called defensible space codes will affect only about 106,000 tax lots. But experts say thats an important step in identifying and protecting fire-prone areas as the state continues to contend with record-breaking wildfires.Since 2020, blazes even burned up homes on the Oregon coast, just inland from the Pacific Ocean in areas once thought almost immune to fire because of a wetter, cooler climate.After 2020, we cant pretend anymore that this is just an issue for southwest Oregon and central Oregon, Andy McEvoy, a faculty research assistant at Oregon State Universitys College of Forestry who worked on the map, told The Associated Press. All of those events really cried out for a statewide a truly statewide strategy to respond to wildfire risk.Wind-fueled blazes over Labor Day weekend in 2020 were among the worst natural disasters in state history, killing nine people, burning more than 1,875 square miles (4,860 square kilometers), and destroying thousands of homes and other structures.The 2024 wildfire season was also historic. It cost Oregon more than $350 million, making it the states most expensive on record, and it burned a record of nearly 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers), largely on range and grazing land in the states rural east.McEvoy said the maps will help officials aid communities most in need of wildfire resources. Reducing vegetation around homes to create a buffer zone of defensible space and installing certain fire-resistant features such as metal roofs or fiber cement siding can make a home more resilient to fire.If we manage our vegetation a certain way, if we build our structures out of certain materials, then we can increase the likelihood of that structure surviving, he said. But were not going to change the probability of the fire occurring in the first place.The two maps showing wildfire hazard levels and the wildland-urban interface were released by the Oregon Department of Forestry and developed by Oregon State University scientists.Under a state law passed in 2023, insurers cannot use a wildfire hazard map produced by a state agency to cancel or decline to renew a homeowner insurance policy, or to increase premiums. However, McEvoy noted that most insurers have been developing their own wildfire risk models for a long time.Theres very little in this map that hasnt been illustrated or represented in other products produced by researchers or the insurance community themselves, he said.Oregon fire officials and researchers modified the original wildfire hazard maps after receiving thousands of public comments and holding public meetings across the state. McEvoy said major changes included reducing the hazard status of irrigated farmland as well as hay and pasture lands. The latter are often irrigated during haying and grazed during much of the fire season, which reduces the vegetation fuels on the landscape.California, Arizona and New Mexico have had wildfire hazard maps for years. Last year, lawmakers in Washington state ordered the creation of a statewide wildfire risk map, and in 2023, Colorado passed a law establishing a wildfire resiliency code board.The adoption process for the defensible space codes, which will be overseen by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, and the building codes, which will be overseen by the Building Codes Division, wont begin until after the appeals period for the wildfire hazard maps is complete. The Oregon Department of Forestry will notify landowners of affected tax lots.Claire Rush, Associated PressSusan Montoya Bryan and Sejal Govindarao contributed to this report.

Two months after it announced plans to discontinue its high-end Quest Pro VR/XR headset, Meta has stopped selling its remaining inventory of the device, which saw prices of between $1,000 and $1,500 over the short course of its life. And that has once again thrust virtual reality headsets into a spotlight.A decade ago, they were heralded as the next great thing, with Meta paying $2 billion in 2014 to acquire Oculus and buying a suite of VR development studios in the years that followed. Apples entry into the market last year with the Vision Pro got enthusiasts excited once again.But the end of the Meta Quest Pro is again raising questions about the viability of high-end VR in the consumer marketplace. And with Metas top headset now nothing but a memory, eyes turn to Apple.The Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500 and up. A year ago it was Apples biggest new product of the past 10 years. Since then, enthusiasm has faded. Apple has not released sales numbers for the device and did not reply to Fast Companys request for comment, but in October, the Wall Street Journal reported sales have been disappointing, with Apple reportedly cutting its first year shipments roughly in half.The VR market, overall, is in flux, at best. Headset sales were down in the first two quarters of 2024, but rebounded slightly in the third quarter, according to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. Meta still has more than a 70% market share and Apples sales numbers did not drive the Q3 growth.The Vision Pro did get some good news at CES this week, though. Nvidia announced Monday that its GeForce Now game-streaming service would be coming to the headset later this month, giving owners access to more than 2,100 AAA video games without the need for a separate computer. (The service is also coming to Metas Quest 3 and the Pico headset.)Nvidia also said it was using the Vision Pro to help humanoid robots learn automated tasks. And Wicked director Jon Chu gave the headset a positive spin when he announced he had used the Vision Pro to view and give feedback on edits of the movie.I cant tell you what a revelation this was, he said. This is big stakes, cutting-edge productivity work that is available to use today! I am still shook. I dont think people fully realize the amount of workflow breakthroughs I think the Vision Pro will lead to.Accolades like that may not help grow the consumer audience base but for now, Apple is largely chasing professionals, as the price of the device is still well out of reach for most people. And the Vision Pros app store reflects that, with a shrinking number of native apps for the headset.At $3,500, its not a mass-market product, Apple CEO Tim Cook told the WSJ in October. Right now, its an early-adopter product. People who want to have tomorrows technology todaythats who its for. Fortunately, theres enough people who are in that camp that its exciting.Apple seemingly isnt close to throwing in the towel, though, despite Meta abandoning its high-end VR product. A cheaper version of the Vision Pro is still in the works, said analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X. While that has seemingly been pushed back to 2027, an upgraded version of the Vision Pro with a faster processor is still expected this year, she added.

At the ongoing CES 2025, Sony has launched the prototype of an extended reality headset dubbed XYN specifically for creating 3D spatial content. The Japanese consumer Electronics giant briefly previewed their motive to develop the headset at last years CES and now the wearable has got better with 4K OLED microdisplays and video passthrough tech.XYN is a comprehensive software and hardware solution to support VR content creators to capture the precise details of the real-world environment and seamlessly integrate with an array of third-party tools for a flexible workflow. This makes complete sense as demand for mixed reality and virtual reality content is spiking. Making it easier for developers to create such content will push the whole wearable headset universe forward.Designer: SonyCreators can use the XYN in conjunction with Sonys spatial content creation software to craft extended reality content including 3D objects, animations, and immersive games for Metaverse applications. When not in use the wearer can flip the headset up since theyll be using it for long durations while creating content. The only thing missing this year compared to last years version is the pointer and ring on top. At the event, the headset was spotted in two colorways black and gray. The price and release date of the headset are still uncertain, and we hope to hear more from Sony in the coming months.Alongside the XYN headset, Sony has also revealed the Xyn Motion Studio which is a Windows app with support for up to 12 Mocopi sensors for an improved motion capture flow. This is often used by video content creators to control virtual avatars courtesy of the wireless motion tracking system. The advanced software enables the developers to cut or merge motions, as well as toggle the time and position. A prototype of the spatial capture solution is now capable of converting any real objects or mirrorless camera photos into photorealistic 3D computer-generated assets. The software is slated to release in March 2025.The post Sony XYN VR headset for creating 3D games and Metaverse applications debuts at CES 2025 first appeared on Yanko Design.

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Rumors spread on Tuesday that Apple would release the new iPhone SE and iPads alongside iOS 18.3 later in January, but they have been quickly dismissed by a more reliable source.iPhone SE 4 could resemble the iPhone 14 with a single rear cameraApple is expected to have a packed early 2025 lineup spread from now until WWDC, however, recent rumors have assumed an even faster timeline for some products. That has all been put to bed thanks to an insight from a reliable source making better sense of the available data.According to a post from Mark Gurman, Apple is indeed developing the iPhone SE 4 and new iPads with iOS 18.3 in mind for the launch. However, he states that Apple would release these products "by April if all goes to plan." Rumor Score: Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums