Today’s top weather news: Raging wildfires engulf Los Angeles while major winter storm brews

Welcome to the Daily Weather Update from FOX Weather. It’s Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. Start your day with everything you need to know about today’s weather. You can also get a quick briefing of national, regional and local weather whenever you like with the FOX Weather Update podcast.

Los Angeles engulfed by apocalyptic wildfires fueled by hurricane-force winds

Southern California is under siege as a terrifying inferno, fueled by the wrath of hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, threatens to consume everything in its path.

State authorities have yet to fully assess the carnage, but harrowing images emerging from the hardest-hit areas around Los Angeles reveal a grim reality of a landscape of devastation. Dozens, if not hundreds, of homes lie in ruins, consumed by the relentless advance of three monstrous blazes – the Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires – each fueled by the most ferocious Santa Ana winds in over 14 years. 

More than 30,000 residents around the area have been forced to flee their homes in a desperate exodus amid destruction that stretches for miles. Burning streets are littered with the ghostly remains of over 100 abandoned vehicles – silent testaments to the panic that erupted as the inferno ignited Tuesday morning.

Flames from the Palisades Fire burns a car and homes during a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

(Apu Gomes/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Major winter storm to slam South creating massive travel disruptions from Dallas to Atlanta

Forecasters are closely monitoring the potential for another high-impact winter storm that’s expected to blast across the U.S. this week, just days after the first major winter storm of 2025 comes to an end.

The FOX Forecast Center said the incoming storm will likely impact cities farther south than the most recent storm, putting millions of people in cities such as Dallas, in Texas, Little Rock in Arkansas, Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee and Atlanta in Georgia on alert for winter weather.

In fact, the first Winter Storm Warnings have been issued in the southern Plains and lower Mississippi Valley and include the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and Little Rock, Arkansas. Meanwhile, Winter Storm Watches extend eastward across the South to western North Carolina and North Georgia, including the Atlanta metro area.

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Watch this: Palisades Fire explodes as people flee from burning homes

Southern California residents are fleeing the wind-whipped Palisades Fire after the blaze exploded in size during a potentially life-threatening windstorm.

Photos and videos from Los Angeles and surrounding areas show the intensity of the fire.

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