(TNND) — Much of Southern California is under a red flag warning through Wednesday with more strong winds in the forecast.

Cal Fire warned of “life-threatening winds and dangerously low humidity” ... “creating a significant risk of rapid fire spread.”

Wildfires have devastated swaths of Southern California over the last week, with at least 24 people killed, at least 23 others missing, thousands of structures destroyed and a whopping 62 square miles burned.

The Palisades Fire, along the coast in Los Angeles County, was 14% contained as of Monday morning. The Eaton Fire, inland near Pasadena, was 33% contained as of Monday morning.

Another inland fire, the Hurst Fire near Interstate 5 and the northern part of the San Fernando Valley, was 95% contained.

Dry, powerful winds that have come down off the mountains have fueled the spread of these fires.

Those are the Santa Ana winds, which Southern California experiences multiple times every year.

“The disaster we're seeing now is largely the result of the severity of these winds,” said Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist working for the U.S. Geological Survey in California.

This time, Santa Ana winds have been about twice as strong as normal. And they’ve made for a dangerous pairing with dry conditions where any spark can quickly erupt into a raging wildfire.

Keeley said Santa Ana winds are normally around 30-40 mph.

This time, the L.A. area has seen Santa Ana winds between 70-100 mph, he said.

“These are really severe Santa Ana wind events,” Keeley said.

Santa Ana winds usually arrive in the fall and early winter.

Keeley said they can last anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks.

The strong winds are the result of a high-pressure cell that develops to the east of California, usually in the Great Basin, and a low-pressure cell typically off the coast.

And Santa Ana winds flow westward to the shore of California.

Keeley said Southern California is also experiencing a long drought.

“Typically, we get rains beginning in the autumn and going through the winter,” he said. “This year, we've gotten almost no rain in the autumn and so far in the winter. And so, our normal six-month drought is now like a nine-month drought. And so, things are very dry, much drier than typical.”

Dry conditions and strong winds alone don’t start destructive wildfires.

There has to be an ignition of some sort.

While the causes of the current fires are under investigation, Keeley said there’s a good chance power line failures might have played a role.

“Because 70-100 mph winds have the capacity to knock power lines down or cause them to arc and throw off sparks,” he said.

Power line failures are a growing risk for wildfires in California.

Keeley said five times more land has burned over the last 20 years than during the previous 20 years because of power line incidents that occurred during Santa Ana winds.

More people now live near wildland areas, and the power grid has expanded with them, he said.

California has added about 6 million people this century.

“So, we have many more people, and they are being pushed further and further out into the wildland-urban interface,” Keeley said. “And that means not only are more people at risk, because they're closer to wildland fuels where these fires start. But also, they bring power lines, which increase the probability of an ignition starting a fire.”

The impact of population growth is important to consider, he said, because “there's a lot of reporting that is suggesting that this is the result of climate change. I don't dispute global warming at all. It is happening. But all of these three events, the long drought and the severe winds and ignitions from power line failures, all of these have been experienced repeatedly over the last 100 years.”

Santa Ana winds, of course, also aren’t new.

And Keeley said their frequency isn’t changing.

But their timing is shifting some. Looking at data over the last 70 years, he’s found there are fewer Santa Ana wind events taking place now in September and more in December and January.

That means there’s a higher probability of winter wildfires.

What, if anything, can be done to stop a repeat of the disaster that’s struck the L.A. area this week?

Keeley said we can’t stop the powerful Santa Ana winds.

There’s no magic solution to stop droughts.

“Without a doubt, the one thing that we can do is work more aggressively on fire prevention,” he said.

Power companies are working on it, Keeley said.

That means better maintenance of power lines and clearing fuels – trees and the like – that could catch fire around the power lines.

And, at times, it might mean shutting off power to parts of the grid to reduce fire risks during high-danger times.