Winds began gaining strength across Southern California on Tuesday, as forecasters warned of powerful, dry gusts that could bring down trees, damage homes and bring extreme fire risk to areas that haven't seen substantial rain in months.

The major wind event is again bringing dangerous fire weather conditions — meaning that if a fire sparks, the blaze could quickly spread into an erratic, fast-moving wildfire.

For the third time since early November, parts of Southern California’s Los Angeles and Ventura counties are under a red flag warning for extreme fire danger.

Strong winds — with gusts as high as 79 mph in the San Gabriel Mountains — began blowing their way through Southern California on Tuesday morning, Jan. 7, leading to the possibility of downed trees and wires, power outages and dangerous fire weather.

Southern California Edison, one of the major electricity providers, could shut off power to more than 409,000 residents amid a major Santa Ana windstorm this week.

Forecasters have warned of a “life-threatening, destructive” windstorm for Southern California this week, as powerful gusts and dropped humidity levels will raise the risk for wildfires in parched are

Southern California power companies were preparing to shut off electricity for nearly a half-million homes and businesses on Tuesday when extremely dangerous fire weather was expected to hit a tinder-dry region that has gone without any measurable rain since last spring.