Biden urges Congress to ‘step up’ on California aid as LA warned of ‘explosive fire growth’ – as it happened

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Weather forecasters are predicting that the dry season in Los Angeles is likely to get worse in the coming weeks and that the drought which intensified last week across southern California will continue to worsen into March.

Meteorologist Eric Holthaus has written for the Guardian and says the rain forecast for the next three weeks in Los Angeles means the city's record-dry start to its rainy season will keep getting worse.

This year's rainy season is running at just 2% of normal for Los Angeles, which has only seen 0.16in of rain so far.

Weather models increasingly indicate that southern California will receive no rain at all during the rest of January, and potentially no rain during the first week or two of February as well.