The vegetation was parched and the air was dry. The worst storm in a decade had arrived.

All it needed was a spark.

When a fire ignited in the Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, winds swept over and through the mountains like whitewater rapids. Winds as strong as a hurricane pushed the flames through dense neighborhoods, and swirling vortices of fire danced from house to house, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

Since November, the extremely dry vegetation has been whipped by regular Santa Ana winds, which first sparked the Franklin Fire in November, then the Malibu Fire in December and now this week’s fires, considered the most devastating of the Los Angeles fires has ever seen. Before each cycle, the National Weather Service issued a “particularly hazardous situation” warning, a newer, higher-level type of alert that should only be used every two to three years.

The current cycle of Santa Ana winds began Tuesday with the first of four wind events expected to continue into next week and likely beyond, fueling fire activity and hampering firefighting efforts.

The second event began on Friday morning and subsided on Friday afternoon. It was slightly weaker than the first, but still brought winds of 80 to 90 miles per hour to the mountains of Southern California.

After that, an expected window of about 18 hours of relative calm, lasting into Saturday, was the best break firefighters had to contain the Los Angeles blaze.

A third round of winds with gusts about as strong as Friday’s is expected to last from Saturday into late Sunday morning or early Sunday afternoon. With these forecast winds, dry air and dehydrated vegetation, critical fire weather conditions are likely, particularly for the higher elevation areas surrounding Los Angeles.

Even with the slightly weaker wind events in Santa Ana, the gusts could spread the fires even further and the fire danger remains elevated.

While the intensity of the winds may ebb and flow over the weekend and another brief lull is forecast for Sunday into Monday morning, forecasters fear a fourth wind event that will begin Monday and continue through Wednesday.

“Widespread, possibly high-level, critical fire weather conditions are likely across western portions of the L.A. Basin and higher elevation areas of Southern California,” forecasters at the Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said of next week’s event.

The most likely scenario is that a moderate to strong wind event will strengthen in Santa Ana late Monday and peak on Tuesday.

This event has the potential to be stronger than two before it, but like them, it is most likely what forecasters called a “more classic Santa Ana event,” which the first event was not.

One of the complicating factors of this week’s first storm was that, unlike a typical Santa Ana event, it had a slightly more northerly direction, causing the winds to blow perpendicular to the mountains and forcing them to crash over the mountain range like waves crashing large rocks patter beach. This brought strong winds to areas where they do not normally occur.

As they pushed through the mountains, the winds also created swirling wind patterns called eddies, just as water in a river would do as it flows past a rock. This caused the wind to swirl around the sheltered side of the mountains and flames like the Eaton Fire to burn in a particularly irregular pattern. While winds may be strong next week, they should follow a more classic path across the region for now.

While such a series of Santa Ana winds is not uncommon in January, the extreme fire conditions have been made worse by dry weather that has brought scant rainfall since last May. Typically, the main fire season in this region ends with the onset of rain in the fall.

It could finally rain toward the end of next week, but if it does, it probably won’t rain nearly as much as would be needed in the area to stop the fire threat.