Southern California wind conditions This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Southern California wildfire maps: Evacuation areas, power outages, winds ...

On that day, I learned an essential rule of fieldwork in the desert: Don’t forget a shovel. Otherwise, if your vehicle gets stuck, as ours did, you’ll have to dig it out by hand.

Covering more than 25 million acres — about a fourth of California — the geologically diverse California Desert Conservation Area includes sand dunes, canyons, dry lakes, 90 mountain ranges, and 65 ...